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Subject  ..rr..^Y>K.i%>4^ 

Instructor ~T! 

J.  L.  Hammett  Co.,  Cambridge  and  Newark 


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oi  manures  and  the  function  of  garden 

Bulbous  plants  have  a  chapter  to   thrushes,  as 
rns— which  rarely  flourish  in  town  gardens — 
climbing  plants  and  trees  and  shrubs. 

VEGETABLE   GROWING.     By  James   Edwabd 

Knott.     8,}   5|,  352  pp.     Kimpton.     l.v 

rk  for  agricultural  students,  by  the  Research 
98or  of  VegetabL  omell 

Uni  verity. 

HISTORY 

THE    LIFE    BTOBY    OF    BHK.HA.M    YOUNG. 
Mormon  Leader,  Founder  of  Salt  Lake  City,  and 


Builder     of     an     Empire     in 
Wastes  of  Western  America, 
s   (one  of  his  daughters*. 


the     Uncharted 

By   Si  sa    Ydi-v; 


t-*^*^      ^Wt» 


l.*aSSE3? 


Carbon  Dioxide  as  a  Preservative, 
Solid  carbon  dioxide   may  prove  a 
possible  aid  in  reducing  the  spoilage 

>t   fruits    and   vegetables   in   transit. 

The  United  States  Department  of 
Agriculture  says  that  the  carbon 
dioxide  gas  from  this  refrigeration 
gives  added  protection  when  supple- 
menting ice.  Dr.  Charles  Brooks, 
plant  pathologist  of  the  Bureau  of 
Plant  Industry,  found  that  about  300 
pounds  of  solid  carbon  dioxide  placed 
in  a  refrigerator  car  loaded  with 
warm  fruit  will  increase  the  carbon 
dioxide  content  of  the  air  sufficiently 
within  an  hour  to  check  rotting  and 
softening  as  much  as  would  a  drop 
of  20  to  30  degrees  in  temperature. 
The  action  of  the  gas  in  checking 
spoilage  ceases  after  normal  atmos- 
phere is  restored,  but  by  that  time 
the  car  has  been  fairly  well  cooled 
by  ice  and  further  spoilage  is  pre- 
vented by  the  usual  methods  of  re- 
frigeration. If  the  gas  has  largely 
escaped  from  the  car  within  eighteen 
to  twenty-four  hours  no  objectionable 
flavor  is  likely  to  result,  although 
peaehes,  strawberries,  apricots  and 
red  raspberries  easily  lose  flavor  and 
become  "flat"  and  insipid  under  ex- 
treme     treatments. 


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Raises  Cotton  in  New  Hampshire. 

FRANKLIN,  N.  H.,  July  22  <JP).~ 
Homesick  for  Texas,  Mrs.  Alfred  , 
Ayer,  county  home  demnostration. 
agent,  has  succeeded  in  raising:  the 
garden  products  of  her  native  State 
in  the  soil  of  New  Hampshire.  She  ' 
has  successfully  raised  sugar  cane, 
cotton,  watermelon,  okra  and  pea- 
nuts in  a  season  almost  too  cold  for 
native  products.  


years. 

EXPLAINS  CARE  OF  HERBS 


Department    of    Agriculture    Tells 
How  to  Grow  Them  in  Winter. 

Savory  herbs  growing  in  the  gar- 
den may  be  brought  indoors  for  the 
Winter  and  planted  in  flower  pots 
or  window  boxes  in  a  sunny 
window,  says  a  plant  specialist  of 
the  United  States  Department  of 
Agriculture.  «. 

During  recent  years  there  has 
been  revived  interest  in  aromatic 
herbs  for  flavoring  soups,  meat 
dishes  and  salads,  and  it  is  a  great 
convenience  to  be  able  to  pick  a 
few  savory  leaves  right  in  the 
kitchen.  Mint,  thyme,  tarragon, 
sage,  dill,  chives,  watercress  and 
rose  geranium  are  as  popular  today 
for  flavoring  as  they  were  in  Colo- 
nial times,  although  not  as  much 
"store  is  set"  by  medicinal  herbs 
now  as  then.  Some  of  the  herbs 
may  be  dried  for  Winter  use,  says  a 
bulletin  from  the  Department  of 
Agriculture. 

The  best  herbs  to  grow  in  a 
window  are  mint,  watercress,  par- 
sley, chives,  sweet  marjoram,  basil 
and  rose  geranium.  They  should  be 
transferred  indoors  before  freezing 
weather  into  a  soil  consisting  of 
one  part  sharp  sand,  one  part  well- 
rotted  cow  manure  and  two  or  three 
parts  of  good  garden  loam.  A  very 
small  quantity  of  bone  meal  may  be 
added.  The  soil  should  be  mixed 
thoroughly  and  screened  through  a 
coarse  screen. 


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LITTLE-TREE  FARMS  ATTRACTS 

THOUSANDS 

Since  Little-Tree  Farms  in  Framing- 
ham  Centre  has  adopted  their  popular 
cash  and  carry  policy,  literally  thous- 
ands have  driven  out  to  the  Farms, 
made  their  selections,  loaded  the  plants 
ahd  headed  for  home  again  in  a  gen- 
uinely happy  frame  of  mind.  Substan- 
tially reduced  prices  and  the  mainten- 
ance of  their  usual  high  quality  have 
caused  thousands  to  be  attracted  to 
the  "plant-mart"  at  the  Farms. 

Scores  of  varieties- -hundreds  of 
plants  including  roses,  perennials, 
flowering  shrubs  and  decorative  ever- 
greens may  be  found  on  display  await- 
ing the  inspection  and  selection  by  the 
many  visitors  at  the  Farms. 

The  rirea  devoted  to  the  "plant  mart" 
has  recently  been  extended  to  more 
than  twice  what  seemed  adequate  a  few 
short  weeks  ago.  Here  may  be  found 
plants  to  satisfy  every  conceivable  home 
decorative  need. 

Adjoining  the  "plant  mart"  is  the 
big  glass  garden  store,  the  only  one  of 
its  kind  in  the  country.  This  beautiful 
and  unique  building  is  devoted  chiefly 
to  the  display  of  garden  pottery  in  rich 
and  distinctive  colors,  wrought  iron 
work,  garden  tools  of  all  descriptions, 
horticultural  books,  bird  houses  and 
garden  furniture. 

Visitors  and  guests  at  the  Farms  are 
a'mazed  at  the  superb  beauty  of  the  dis- 
play, the  high  quality  of  the  plants, 
and  the  moderateness  of  the  prices. 


LOCAL  ITEMS 


Mrs. 
're^ 


Charles  F.    Hasey 
°sident  °"* 


Of    ^""'Xter 


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,  Cynwyd   I683-' 


> 


A.  B.  ROSS 

ITTORNEY-AT-U/ 
BAUA-CYNWYD,  PA. 


Mr. Richard  B.Gregg. 
Bemis,  Tenn. 

Dear  Sir: 


March  18th,  1929 


me  by  Minton,Balch  &  Co,  and 


Your  letter  has  been  forwarded  t( 
only  reached  me  this  morning. 

Cynwyd  Station  is  6  miles  from  the  Broad  Street  Station  of  the 
Pennsylvania  Railroad;  and  if  you  will  phone  me  I  will  be  glad  to  have 
an  interview.   Unfortunately  I  live  in  an  apartment  and  have  not  been 
able  for  the  past  two  years  to  get  ground  for  a  garden.   Also  much  of  my 
work  has  kept  me  in  western  Pennsylvania,  so  that  I  doubt  if  a  garden 


would  do  either  of  us  much  good. 


The  book  itself  is  rather  a  prophecy  or  forecast  than  a  system 
:n  our  own  people  will  follow  today.  After  I  had  written  it  I  got 
,  through  a  friend,  of  "Farmers  of  Forty  Centuries"  by  Dr.Kino°  of 
Wisconsin.   It  is  published  by  the  Democrat  Publishing  Co.,  of  Madison. 
It  describes  the  three-crop  system  of  farming  in  various  uarts  of  China-" 
nrithout  analysis  of  the  factors  of  efficiency.  ' 

Another  book  of  greet  value  as  throwing  light  on  the  subject 
is  "The  Law  of  Diminishing  Returns",  published  for  $1  by  the  World  Book  Co 
of  Yonkers-on  Hudson,  New  York.     This  also  I  procured  after  I  had  writ- 
ten the  book  on  Gardening.   I  suspect  that  the  writing  of  the  book  sprung 
out  of  a  series  of  articles  I  had  written  for  the  Farm  Journal,  Dr-Spillman 
and  I  feeing  closely  associated  and  in  sympathy  with  the  subject  matter  of 
the  articles. 

The  system, of  gardening  takes  into  account  a  number  of  elements... 
the  sun- power  as  an  increasing  and  diminishing  power  plant  for  grortth-  the 
intensive  planting  as  a  means  of  great  water  conservation  and  use,  the  side 
by  side  placing  of  finishing  and  starting  crops,  for  better  utilization  of 
the  elements  of  time  and  space,  catalysis  through  the  mixture  of  various 
elements  of  fertiliser  and  the  inoculation  of  the  legumes,  the  increase  of 
soil  fertility  through  constant  root  additions  in  place  of  manure  the 
retention  of  soil  balance  through  a  rotation  within  a  single  year,  and  cer- 
tain other  factors  of  productivity  the  importance  and  proofs  of  which  I 
have  worked  out  since  writing  the  book,  and  which  I  hope  to  oublish,  along 
pith  other  new  matter,  in  a  book  on  which  I  have  been  working  for  about 
six  years.  u 


There  is  no  reason  why  the  system  cannot  be  worked  out  for  inten- 
sive trucking  in  which  proper  machinery  replaces  horse  power,  althoup-h 
of  course,  not  to  the  same  extent  as  where  the  man  and  the  hoe  do  the  worl 
+  Ln1S  &.™-ttel   of  Eventing  machinery  for  quantity  production:  the  presenl 
tools  will  not  do  the  work  efficiently.   And  hand  labor,  for  a  long  time 


A.  B.  ROSS 

iTTORNE  Y- AT- LAW 

BALA-CYNWYD,  PA. 


to  come,will  be  prohibitive  in  cost;   oerhaps  we  will  never  have  to  go  ha* 

ble  only  tS"^^!^.?^^1^  £j. *f  «°?% ?  *?*   is  ^~ 
every  step  taken  in  the  |ardef n^fto'be  w?S  oJX^  *  T   theB'  bUt 

a  year,  however,  are'  easv  to  get  and  without  th»  So      JhIee  crops 
destruction  where  one  becomes6?oo  SmbltioSs        S6rS  °f  traraPinS  and 

cy  to^.^^^J5?is*i«  j^  S.a!SS1Sh:tjp1-d  »}•  •«*•*■ 

.tmue   to   occupy  us  until   the  oinch  of  neoessitv  fo^2     flelc  and  will  con- 
methods.  .  .and    that   seems   to  me  a  low  to?  in  tL  SfSJ!  US   t0  imProve  our 
the  use   of  modern  transportation  me?hoS     JL  hf  distance.  We,    through      . 

sections  as  our  source/of  foo?supol?     and   If^^f  Ce£tain  favore^ 
which  could  compete  with  better  methods     hL,  5™*'   £0t  !°  fevored  but 
will      in  my  opinion,    centime  Lr^ery  long   Ume?  lecau^tf6  ™'      Th&t 
tumties   so   to  improve  rathe  methods  of  iv+tSow  '  ,   e2?use   there  are  oppor-> 

growing  needs  for  a  long  lime   to  coml  production  as   to  meet  our 

Mng  to  ,o?s:  ^tS^cs^oi:  ss  s°^rsittB  whvre  not  wn- 

the  generality  of  producers.  slowly  but   surely  reacting  on 

but  hope  tffi  weTllP^  f^lnJe  lorVoo^f "  T  C0Uld  «°  on>  °f  •<>»••! 
me  what  questions  you  ha^  ?„  "STanaVwnf  do^betf  to^"  7°U  Ca"  aS* 

answer.  BUi   uo  my   best   to  give  you  an 

Phia,   and  St  rn^nV  where  f  c^me^ou" "  JVt^  J™?   la  Philadel" 
do   so.          For   the  next   six  weeks   I   «IK   in  J  *      m  in  the  City   X  wil1 

in   the  mountain  district  of  lennsylvS!a     tLTi  ,t  f>°?.deal   <>*  my   time 
lands  and  valuing  them  for  certain  Is?at48          LlJt Vf0*lng  °ver  SOme 
good  deal   of  time.  estates large   tracts  which   take  a 

interior  of'lSi.^a^J^Se^Sj  ITl  *?»?*  2?  *«*«***  in  the 
is  that,  in  this  temperate  section  I  rainfall  «?  ™^ga*i0n:  My  own  view 
for  full   growth  during  all     h     ,  ndt.  °f  3°  lncheB  is  ^uite   enough 

consistent  with  a  fail  SJitSSuS^S  su^hV^in  ?£"**  *?  Cl°Sely  as 
regions,    of  course,   heavier  ^nfSl0^^^^?1;^^.*^^ 

Very  truly  yours, 


-\JUL 


/ 


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Mothballs  Keep  Mosquitoes 
from   Descending   Chimney 

MALARIA-BEARING  mosquitoes  emu- 
late Santa  Claus  in  some  parts  of  the 
South.  When  they  find  doors  and  windows 
screened,  they  come  down  the  chimney 
seeking  whom  they  may  devour,  and  bear- 
ing unwelcome  gifts  of  "fever  V  ague." 
But  you  can  keep  them  out  by  hanging 
a  little  basket  of  naphthalene,  the  stuff 
mothballs  are  made  of,  at  the  top  of  the 
chimney.  They  hate  it,  and  will  zoom  out 
of  its  range  as  soon  as  they  smell  it,  no 
matter  how  much  good  biting  may  lie 
slumbering  below.  This  is  one  of  the  curi- 
ous facts  about  mosquito  behavior  which 
have  been  learned  by  the  United  States 
Public  Health  Service. 

Not  all  mosquitoes  will  enter  houses  by 
coming  down  chimneys,  and  it  is  not  known 
whether  all  of  them  can  be  driven  off  with 
naphthalene.  One  species,  however,  re- 
sponds in  this  way,  Anopheles  quadrimacu- 
latus,  the  four-spotted  malaria  mosquito. 
But  she  is  important  enough  to  make  this 
bit  of  entomological  knowledge  very  much 
worth   having. — Science  Service. 

"Boundary"  Rays  Reveal 


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GIANT  VEGETABLES 
REPORTED  BY  SOVIET 

New  Farm  Method  Is  Said  to 

Increase    Size    and    Yield 

[Ten  and  Twelve  Fold. 


MANY   TONS   TO   THE    ACRE 


Extra    Rich    Fertilizer   Is    Used   and 
I        Plant    Growth    Is   on    Framt 
Work  Above  Weeds. 


By  WALTER  DURANTY. 

Wirelesi  to  The  New  Tore  Times. 
'  MOSCOW,  Aug.  3.— The  newspaper 
Jzvestia  has  discovered  a  Russian 
Luther  Burbank  named  Zolotof  work- 
ing at  an  experimental  cotton  planta- 
tion near  Bokhara.  If  half  what  Is 
asserted  in  a  four-column  article 
written  by  Zolotoi's  associate,  Agron- 
ofski, Is  true  the  Soviet  Union  could 
lead  the  world  in  cotton  production 
within  ten  years. 

Agronofski  declared  the  Zolotof 
method  has  produced  an  average  of 
five  tons  of  cotton  an  acre,  ten  to 
twelve  times  greater  than  last  year's 
average  in  the  Bokhara  region.  Ex- 
periments with  other  plants  produced 
120  tons  of  potatoes  an  acre,  110  tons 
pf  tomatoes,  90  tons  of  Egyptian 
beetroot,  175  tons  of  cucumbers,  &c. 

The  tomatoes  weighed  two  and  a 
quarter  to  three  pounds  each,  cab- 
bages weighed  eight  to  fifty  pounds, 
and  betroots  ten  and  a  half.  Egg- 
plants grew  a  yard  and  a  half  long 
and  twenty  feet  high  and  tobacco 
eix  feet  or  more,  with  150  leaves  to 
the  stem  and  an  acre's  yield  of  dried 
|eaf  was  seven  tons. 

The  method  consists  mainly  in. set- 
ting the  plants  of  any  culture  in  soil 
piled  with  a  sort  of  wattle  frame- 
work of  canes  and  cane  piping, 
through  which  irrigation  water  per- 
colates to  feed  the  plants  from  be- 
low. This,  it  is  asserted,  eliminates 
weeds  and  the  cumbrous  weeding 
now  required  three  times  a  season. 
The  method  also  permits  fourfold 
denser  planting  and  the  hot  sun  and 
fertile  soil  of  the  section,  which  once 
was  the  garden  of  the  world  does  the 
rest. 


Agronofski  says  the  initial  rW  0f 
preparation,  plus  seed  and  fertlizer, 
amounts  to  700  roubles  ($350  at  par) 
an  acre,  but  will  last  for  five  years, 
thus  reducing  the  cost  to  140  rubles 
a  year.  Taking  the  lowest  price  for 
cotton,  he  calculates  a  return  of  2,000 
rubles  an  acre  yearly.  With  metallic 
wattle  and  tubing,  which  cost  no 
more  than  cane  if  prodlced  on  a 
mass  scale  but  which  would  last 
twenty-five  years  instead  of  five,  the 
cost  per  acre  would  be  correspond- 
ingly reduced. 

Agronofski  demands  first,  that 
representatives  of  State  farms  and 
collectives  and  agricultural  experts 
be  sent  to  Zolotof's  station  to  in- 
vestigate for  themselves,  second  that 
more  ample  funds  be  placed  at  his 
disposal  and  an  adequate  number  of 
Qualified  hands,  third  that  all  col- 
lectives in  Centrasia  be  ordered  to 
try  Zolotof  method  on  at  least  one 
acre  and  State  farms  on  at  least  100 
acres,  and  fourth  that  a  new  State 
farm  be  formed  at  first  with  only 
500  or  1,000  acres  to  use  the  Zolotof 
method  exclusively  with  metal  tubing 
and  100  per  cent  mechanization. 

This  correspondent  understands 
that  the  Commissariat  of  Agriculture 
is  profoundly  interested  and  proposes 
to  follow  these  suggestions. 


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Rats  can  be  banished  from  the  cellar 
by  using  chloride  of  lime.  Sprinkle  lib- 
erally on  the  cellar  floor,  or  wherever 
their  haunts  are  suspected  to  be. 


A    Picture    r\f   ~\1  <■ 


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|T-JDUA. 


KNOWLES  A.  RYERSON 

U.  S  Department  of  Agriculture 


In  Charge  office  of 

FOREIGN    PUNT   INTRODUCTION  BUREAU    OF    PLANT    INDUSTRY 


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MHiMHI 


THE    NEW    YORK   TIMES,    TH 


ADVISES  ON  SOIL  TESTS. 


Agriculturist  Says  Holes  Give  Clue 
to  Good  Orchard  Sites. 

Bore  a  hole  in  th«  ground  and 
watch  the  water  level  during  April, 
May  and  June  before  making  a 
final  decision  to  plant  an  apple  or- 
chard on  a  prospective  site,  Joseph 
Oskamp  of  the  New  York  State 
College  of  Agriculture,  advises  in  a 
bulletin  from  Ithaca.  The  holes,  he 
says,  give  two  important  clues  as 
to  the  suitability  of  the  soil  to  grow 
a  profitable  fruit  crop.  Some  soils 
will  grow  trees  but  not  profitable 
crops,  he  warns. 

It  is  a  common  experience  to  find 
water  rising  in  a  post  hole  within 
a  half  hour  after  the  hole  is  dug. 
The  water  rises  to  a  point  where  it 
remains  stationary,  and  may  re- 
main at  the  same  point  for  days  or 
weeks.  The  temporary  water  table 
is  called  ground  water.  Professor 
Oskamp  recommends  the  boring 
of  holes  four  feet  deep  with  an 
inch-and-a-half  auger.  The  test 
wells  should  be  protected  against 
surface  run-in  and   should  be  well 


distributed  over  the  prospective 
site.  Well-drained  soils  have  little 
ground  water  in  the  surface  four 
feet;  the  level  varies  in  imperfectly 
drained  soils  from  one  to  three 
feet,  while  the  poorest  drained  soils 
are  usually  water-logged  within 
nine  to  eighteen  inches  of  the  sur- 
face. 

A  quicker  way  to  examine  such 
soils  is  to  study  the  soil  make-up 
as  borings  are  made.  If  the  sur- 
face four  feet  is  of  a  uniform  color, 
usually  some  shade  of  brown,  and 
has  no  sharply  defined  changes, 
the  indications  point  to  a  good  or- 
chard soil.  Such  soils  are  generally 
loams  or  sandy  loams.  Where  the 
water  has  been  slow  to  drain,  the 
subsoil  is  spotted  or  mottled,  and 
the  more  gray  mottling  present  the 
poorer  the  drainage.  Kusty  iron- 
colored  nodules,  about  the  size  of 
a  grain  of  wheat,  are  further  evi- 
dence of  poor  drainage.  Fields 
containing  more  than  a  small  pro- 
portion of  such  soils  are  unsatis- 
factory for  fruit. 


THE  WEATHER 




WASHINGTON,    D.    C,    Jan.    25  | 
UP).— The  disturbance  that  was  cen-  | 
tral  over  Arkansas  Tuesday  night 
has  advanced  to  Eastern  Virginia 


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-         ..  .^ 

HOMESTEAD  HELD 
BEST  INVESTMENT 


Garden  Digest 

—the  "garden  magazine  of 
all  garden  magazines"— be- 
cause it  condenses  helpful 
articles  of  lasting  value  from 
scores  of  magazines.  Garden 
Digest  is  your  private  secre- 
tary —  always  watching  for 
the  best.  Sample,  10  cents. 
One  year,  $1.00. 
GARDEN  DIGEST.  109-B  Great  Oak  Lane 
Pleasantville,  N.  Y. 


u-*Xcc^ 


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Ralph   Borsodi   Writes  of  His 

'Self-Sufficient'  Home  in 

the  Country. 


RAISES   NOTHING   TO   SELL 


People    Can    Make    Two-thirds    of 
Things  They  Use  Cheaper  Than 
They  Can  Buy  Them,  He  Says. 


The  migration  of  millions  of  per- 
sons in  this  country  back  and  forth 
between  city  and  country  is  evi- 
dence of  profound  dissatisfaction 
with  living  conditions  both  in  the 
country  and  in  the  city,  according 
to  Ralph  Borsodi,  author  of  "Flight 
From  the  City,"  just  published  by 
Harper  &  Brothers. 

In  this  book  the  author  discusses 
the  so-called  "Borsodi  experiment" 
which  has  attracted  wide  attention. 
sodio-.Brmfwy  mfwy  mfwy  p  — 
Some  twelve  years  ago  Mr.  Borsodi 
move  his  family  from  New  York  to 
Suffern,  where  they  established  a 
self-sufficient  homestead.  The  book 
discusses  in  detail  the  small  amount 
of  capital  involved,  the  equipment 


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lt)p  /I 


for  gardening,  weaving  and  other 
domestic  production  needed,  and 
how  to  plan  and  select  articles  for 
I  home  manufacture.  Mr.  Borsodi  is 
the  author  of  "The  Distribution 
Age"  and  "This  Ugly  Civilization," 
to  the  latter  of  which  the  present 
volume  is  a  sequel.  As  consulting 
economist  in  Dayton,  Ohio,  the  au- 
thor has  been  instrumental  in  the 
extension  of  his  idea  to  many  fam- 
ilies of  unemployed. 

Raise  Nothing  to  Sell. 

"In  certain  important  respects," 
Mr.  Borsodi  explains,  "our  experi- 
ment was  very  different  from  the 
ordinary  back-to-the-land  adven- 
ture. We  quickly  abandoned  all  ef- 
forts to  raise  anything  to  sell.  Af- 
ter the  first  year,  during  which  we 
raised  some  poultry  for  the  market, 
this  became  an  inviolable  principle. 
We  produced  only  for  our  own  con- 
sumption. If  we  found  it  difficult 
to  consume  or  give  away  any  sur- 
plus, we  cut  down  our  production 
of  that  particular  tMng  and  de- 
voted the  time  to  pr^ucing  some- 
thing else  which  we  wfere  then  buy- 
ing. 

"We  used  machinery  wherever  we 
could,"  the  author  continues,  "and 
tried  to  apply  the  most  approved 
scientific  methods  to  small-scale 
production."  y 

This  led  to  the  discovery,  Mr. 
Borsodi  writes,  that  "more  than 
two-thirds  of  the  things  which  the 
average  family  now  buys  could  be 
produced  more  economically  at 
home  than  they  could  be  bought 
factory  made;  that  the  average 
man  and  woman  could  earn  more 
by  producing  at  home  than  by 
working  for  money  in  an  office  or 
factory  and  that,  theerfore,  the  less 
time  they  spent  working  away  from 
home  and  the  more  time  they  spent 
working  at  home,  the  better  off 
they  would  be." 

The  Home  as  an  Investment.  . . 

Finally,  Mr.  Borsodi  discovered, 
"that  the  home  itself  was  still  ca- 
pable of  being  made  into  a  produc- 
tive and  creative  institution  and 
that  an  investment  in  a  homestead 
equipped  with  efficient  domestic 
machinery  would  yield  larger  re- 
turns per  dollar  of  investment  than 
investments  in  insurance,  in  mort- 
gages, in  stocks  and  bond3>." 

In  Dayton,  Ohio,  for  nearly  a 
year  a  sociological  experiment  of 
far-reaching  significance  has  been 
under  way,  Mr.  Borsodi  points  out. 
"In  this  industrial  city  the  support 
of  the  Council  of  Social  Agencies 
has  been  given  to  an  organized 
movement  based  upon  production 
for  us  (an  contrasted  with  produc- 
tion for  the  market),  and  for  home- 
steading  with  domestic  production, 
as  described  in  this  book.    As  con- 


sulting economist  for  the  Dayton 
movement,  it  has  been  my  privilege 
to  watch  a  development  which 
promises,  because  of  the  interest 
other  cities  are  taking  in  it,  to 
make  social  history." 


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Birds  Vs.  Insects. 

The  wise  gardener  is  not  impelled 
by  sentiment  alone  when  he  does 
everything  within  his  power  to  at- 
tract birds  to  his  small  domain.  Ob- 
servation soon  teaches  that  the 
greater  the  number  of  birds  the 
less  trouble  there  will  be  from  in- 
sects. 

Few  gardeners,  however,  take  ad- 
vantage of  the  simplest  of  all  ways 
of  encouraging  bird  visitors.  This 
is  to  leave  a  few  dense  thickets  in 
the  shrubbery  where  the  nest- 
makers  will  find  congenial  condi- 
tions. Why  build  elaborate— and 
usually     unattractive— bird     houses 

i  when   fewer  than  a  dozen    species 
I  ever  make  use  of  them? 

Practically    all    birds    mate    very 
|  early  in  the  Spring.  Gardeners  who 
l  are     also     nature     students,     when 
|  doing  their  pruning  at  this  time  of 
1  the  year,  take  pains  to  leave  places 
where  the  feathered  home-builders 
will    settle    down    to    rearing   fami- 
lies.     A  tangle   of   honeysuckle   in 
some  out-of-the-way  corner  is  ideal 
for  this  purpose. 


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THE  HARVEY  SOCIETY  LECTURES 
1932-1933 

This  new  volume  presents  the  twenty-eighth  series  of  the 
famous  Harvey  Society  Lectures,  covering  as  usual  a  variety 
of  subjects  by  high  authorities  in  their  respective  fields. 
Edited  by  Dr.  Edgar  Stillman.  Cloth,  5j  x  8,  illustrated. 
$4.00.    The  contents  include  : 

The  Constitutional  Principle  in  Clinical  Medicine.    By  Julius 

Bauer  (Vienna). 
^      Similarities  between  Diseases  of  the  Vegetable  Kingdom  and  those 

of  Man  and  Animals.     By  L.  O.  Kunkel  (Princeton). 
The  Nature  of  the  Menstrual  Cycle.     By  George  W.  Corner 

(Rochester). 


Strip    farming:,    much    advocated    as    a 
means   of   slowing-   down    soil    erosion,   is 

I  also  valuable  as  a  method  of  holding-  in 
check  aphids,  or  "plant  lice."  Strip-farm- 
ing- experiments  have  turned  in  practi-  Tjie 
cally  aphid-free  strips  of  peas  and  canta- 
loupes interplanted  with  corn,  cotton  and 
other  plants,  while  adjacent  solid  fields  of 
the  same  truck  crops  were  destroyed  by 
the  insect?.    The  efficacy  of  this  alternate 

■  planting  is  probably  due  to  the  shelter  and 
encouragement  the  strips  of  other  crops    6 


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5j/ 


given  to  the  natural  parasitic  and  preda-  |  Market 
%tory  insect  enemies  of  the  aphids.  Khe  John 


>ws 


s 


Cracked  eggs  may  be  boiled 
without  the  contents  oozing  out 
if  a  teaspoonful  of  salt  is  added 
to  the  water. 


'm*. 


■hell 


Growing  of  Subtropical  Wheat 

in  Cold  Climate  in  Practice 

on  500,000  Acres. 


1,260  VARIETIES  IN  THE  TEST 


Pr.  Borbdin,  Here,  Tells  of  Suc- 
cess With   Dr.   Lyssenko's 
Method  of  Treating  Seed. 


WEAPON  AGAINST  DROUGHT 


'Shortening  of  Growing  Period  Ripens 

"Yarovized"   Grain    Before   Dry 

Season    Sets    In. 


The  recent  discovery  by  Dr.  T.  D. 
Lyssenko,  who  is  known  as  the  Rus- 
sian Luther'  Burbank,  of  a  process 
that  permits  the  growing  of  sub- 
tropical plants  in  northern  climes, 
and  also  makes  possible  the  crossing 
of  plants  requiring  entirely  different 
periods  of  vegetation,  has  been 
placed  in  operation  on  a.  half-million 
acres  of  land  in  Soviet  Russia,  it  was 
revealed  here  yesterday  by  Dr.  Dmi- 
try N.  Borodin,  Russian  agronomist 
and  plant  physiologist. 

Dr.  Lyssenko's  discovery  was  first 
announced    to    the    English-speaking 


The  Process  Is  Simple. 

"Yarovization,"  Dr.  Vavilov  told 
the  Cornell  gathering,  involves  a  rela- 
tively simple  physiological  treatment 
of  the  seed  before  planting  and  "en- 
ables us  to  utilize  in  our  climate  for 
greeding  and  genetic  work  tropical 
and  subtropical  varieties,  which  prac- 
tically amounts  to  moving  the  south- 
ern flora  northward.  This  creates 
the  possibility  of  widening  the  scope 
of  breeding  and  genetic  work  to  an 
unprecedented  extent,  allowing  the 
crossing  of  varieties  requiring  entire- 
ly different  periods." 

"By  using  an  old  method  of  hy- 
bridization introduced  by  Dr.  Lev 
Sapegin  in  combination  with  'yarovi- 
zation/ "  Dr.  Borodin  said,  "the 
Russian  plant  breeders  are  able  at 
present  to  obtain  four  to  five  gen- 
erations of  Spring  wheat  in  one  year. 
In  other  words,  the  work  which  re- 
quired in  the  past  from  ten  to  twelve 
years  may  be  accomplished  now  in 
only  three  to  four  years." 

Thousands  of  hectares  of  "yaro- 
vized" Winter  wheat,  Dr.  Borodin 
told,  were  planted  quietly  in  the 
steppes  of  Russia  during  the  Spring 
of  1930.  The  results  were  so  encour- 
aging that  more  than  250,00  acres 
were  allotted  the  next  yar. 

There  are  other  advantages  in  the 
planting  of  "yarovised"  seeds,  Dr. 
Borodin  added,  in  addition  to  more 
rapid  reproduction  and  the  shorten- 
ing of  the  vegetation  period.  As  a 
direct  result  of  these  the  crops  out- 
speed  the  rust  and  other  diseases  to 
which  Winter  wheat  is  susceptible 
to  a  high  degree,  while  the  earlier 
ripening  enables  Russian  crops  to  be 
harvested  before  the  period  of  the 
drought,  which  generally  comes  in 
Russia  late  in  June. 

1,260  Wheat  Strains  Tested. 

About  1,260  pure  line  varieties  of 
wheat,  collected  from  different  parts 
of  Azerbaijan,  Trans-Caucasia,  as 
well  as  varieties  of  Ukrainian  wheat, 
Dr.  Borodin  said,  were  sown  on  the 
Odessa  experimental  acres  in  April, 
1930.  Some  of  these  were  "yaro- , 
vised,"  while  others  were  planted  as 
controls. 

"In  the  group  of  non-yarovised 
Ukrainian  varieties,"  he  said,  "ears 
started  to  appear  on  June  15,  and 
these  ears  ceased  to  produce  on  June 
21.  At  the  same  time  the  wheat  from 


scientific  world  last  Agust  before  the 

sixth  Internatienfer'  Congress* •£■  Ge-  . 

netics  at  Cornell  University  by  Dr.  t£?s    alTol  J, ulv  ^  these 


N.  I.  Vavilov,  director  of  the  Insti- 


tion,"     which,   ^literally     translated 
means    "springification" ;    by   means 
of    "yarovization,"    a   term    adopted 
also  by  the  German  scientists,  Win- 
ter varieties  can  be  transformed  into 
Spring  varieties   and    late    varieties 
into  early  ones  by  the  action  on  the 
seed  before  sowing  of  definite  com-  I 
binations  of  temperature,  light,  dark-  1 
ness  and  humidity,  artificially  indue- 1 
ing  processes  of  fermentation. 


on  July  1  these   varieties 


tute  of  Plant  industry  in  LeWfrgrad  J- ^Prised   ^  n    Per   cent   of   the 

ofTtV\tt!n°«^^  -   *>*  the  other  hand»   the  yarovised 

^        *  'group  of  the  Trans-Caucasian  varie- 

ties showed  ears  more  than  two 
weeks  earlier  than  the  Ukrainian. 
Until  the  15th  of  June,  830  varieties, 
or  66  per  cent  of  these  sub-tropical 
wheats,  grown  in  moderate  climate, 
produced  ears,  with  a  yield  in  some 
instances  41  per  cent  larger  than  the 
native  product. 

"The  non-yarovised  Caucasian  va- 
rieties produced  no  grain,  or  grains 
of  very  poor  quality,  while  the  yaro- 


vised Caucasian  varieties  produced 
excellent  grains,  far  superior  to  the 
best  Ukrainian  varieties.  In  other 
words,  semi-tropical  varieties  of 
wheat,  when  planted  in  a  moderate 
climate,  after  yarovization,  surpass 
the  best  local  varieties  not  only  in 
yield  but  also  in  quality.  Special 
baking  tests  that  were  made  on  the 
transplanted  product  showed  it  to 
contain  considerably  higher  food 
.values."  • 

The  experiments  have  so  far  been 
conducted  on  wheat,  millet,  cotton, 
corn,  soybeans'!  barley,  mustard, 
sudangrass,  sorghum,  potatoes  and 
grapes,  the  results  being  the  same  in 
all  instances.  Each  variety,  or  spe- 
cies, requires  its  own_  individual 
treatment.  As  the  experiments  pro- 
gfessTTKbre  and  more  varieties  will 
be  included,"  Dr.  BOrodin  said. 


NC\A/  CAPT  »ir»  i  !■•■-  -»"* 


Coal  Dust  Used  to  Speed 
Soviet  Cotton  Production 

By  Science  Service. 

MOSCOW,  Oct.  2  (By  Mail).- 
Russian  farmers  have  discovered 
a  way  to  speed  up  the  ripening  of 
their  cotton  crops  by  a  month  or 
more.  They  use  coal  to  warm  the 
cotton  plants  without  burning  the 
coal.  This  seeming  paradox  is  be- 
ing performed  at  Kazakstan,  U. 
S.  S.  R. 

Obtaining  heat  from  coal  with- 
out burning  it  is  the  application 
of  the  simple  principle  that  dark 
colors  absorb  the  heat  in  the  suns 
rays  better  than  light  colors. 

The  farmers  spread  coal  dust 
lightly  over  their  fields ;  about  100 
pounds  to  the  acre.  The  darkened 
surface  is  a  better  absorber  of 
heat  during  the  day  and  re-radi- 
ates more  of  it  as  warmth  during 
the  night.  The  higher  average 
temperature  of  the  land  during 
the  growing  season  shortens  the 
time  necessary  for  the  crop  to 
mature. 


CHEMISTRY    COMES    TO    AID    OF    NATURE. 


TfmM  Wid«  World  Photo*. 
Cabinets  in  Which  Fresh.  Green  Cattle  Fodder  Is  Grown  in  10  Days. 
Right—  One  of  the  Trays  in  Which  Feed  Is  Grown  Without  Earth. 


Vegetable  'Gardens'  in  Kitchens  Likely 
As  Cabinet-Grown  Fodder  Crops  Succeed 


Special  Correspondence, 

LEISTON,  England,  Aug.  30.-On 
the  Suffolk  farm  of  Michael  Far- 
raday,  grandson  of  the  great  elec- 
trician, scientists  have  witnessed 
the  first  practical  results  of  sev- 
enteen years'  research  into  a  new 
method  of  growing  crops  which  may 
entirely  revolutionize  agriculture. 

Here,  by  a  special  process  discov- 
ered in  Germany  by  Dr.  Paul  Span- 
genberg  of  Liibeck,  crops  of  maize 


^r\,  *>W 


Thi  N«w  York  Times 

and  barley  are  grown  in  ten  days, 
not  in  the  ground,  but  in  chemi- 
cally treated  trays  arranged  in 
tiers  inside  metal  cabinets.  These 
crops  are  being  used  daily  to  feed 
cattle  and  pigs  on  the  farm  and 
the  animals  are  in  better  condition 
than  others  fed  with  ordinary  out- 
door fodder. 

Farmers  at  the  recent  Ipswich 
Agricultural  Show  were  amazed  at 
this  new  invention.  Already  a  com- 
pany has  been  formed  to  manufac- 


*f.^fe/A%wi4»ii'i^»:..' 


m 


Itr* 


JL 


j1-*- 


*fc 


/V^yi..  Vt. 


LCj&e.l±") 


■*cic  p.   hn.    —"■^uvrs 


turc  the  equipment  and  supply  the 
necessary  chemical  elements.  The 
name  of  the  company  is  British  Cul- 
tivations, Ltd.,  and  the  process  has 
been  fully  patented  under  the  name 
"Kwick  Grow." 

No  Earth  Is  Required. 
Dr.  Spangenberg  made  his  dis- 
covery by  analyzing  the  most  fer- 
tile soil  he  could  find  and  duplicat- 
ing' its  nutrient  content  in  a  chemi- 
cal solution.  This  solution  is  fed 
to  the  seed.  Only  small  quantities 
of  water  are  required  and  no  earth 
is  used.  The  seed  germinated  by 
this  process  are  said  to  produce 
five  times  the  volume  of  seed 
nlanted  in  the  ground. 
"  Each  cabinet  in  which  the  seeds 


are  placed  is  divided  into  ten  sec- 
tions, one  for  each  day's  growth, 
and  each  section  contains  eight 
trays.  As  each  day's  crop  is  "har- 
vested," more  seed  is  immediately 
put  into  the  trays  to  produce  an- 
other crop  in  ten  days.  Thus,  the 
farmer  has  a  fresh  crop,  approxi- 
mating the  finest  June  pasturage, 
every  day  in  the  year. 

Kitchen-Grown  Vegetables. 

Orders  are  being  received  for  cab- 
inets from  farms  in  all  parts  of 
England,  including  one  farmer  who 
is  a  tenant  of  the  King  at  Sandring- 
ham.  In  Germany  the  government 
has  ordered  them  in  large  quanti- 
ties to  be  used  in  concentration 
camps. 

With  the  growing  of  crops  for  feed- 
ing animals  successfully  achieved, 
investigators  are  now  experimenting 
further  with  growing  vegetables. 
This  process  is  still  in  the  experi- 
mental stage,  but  the  men  working 
at  it  have  in  mind  the  ultimate  pro- 
duction of  smaller  cabinets  which 
could  be  kept  in  homes— in  the 
kitchen,  like  an  icebox— to  supply 
the  family  with  fresh  green  prod- 
uce all  the  year  round.  The  grow- 
ing of  fresh  vegetables  is  expected 
to  require  somewhat  more  time 
than  fodder  erops. 

F.  H.  Hedinger,  a  naturalized 
^American  who  is  a  director  of  the 
company,  has  been  in  communica- 
tion with  the  American  Embassy 
in  London  and  authorities  in  the 
United  States,  offering  a  demon- 
stration of  the  process  as  a  means 
of  alleviating  the  fodder  crisis 
caused  by  the  drought.  He  expects 
to  leave  soon  for  America. 


~1 

~1 


i~ tr"^*£*>*0 


__«      _*X    *—     ~±  ^ 


W*^  C 


«-*> 


r* 


<*U,  Jt 


? 


t*x* 


Still  He  Serenely  Cultivates  His  Garden 


ENCHANTED  ACRE.  Adventures 
in  Backyard  Farming.  By  Gove 
Hambidge.  Illustrated  by  Ruth 
Hambidge.  344  pp.  Sunstead 
Series.  New  York:  Whittlesey 
House  ( McGraw-Hill  Book  Com- 
pany).    $2.50. 

npiHE  "adventures"  which  Mr. 
JL  Hambidge  mentions  in  his  sub- 
title are  quite  as  much  in 
spiritual  as  in  material  things. 
They,  and,  in  fact,  the  whole  book 
and  the  "Sunstead  Series,"  to  which 
it  belongs,  have  a  certain  kinship 
with  those  "adventures"  that  lured 
and  so  richly  repaid  the  army  of 
David  Grayson  readers  through  his 
long  list  of  books.  But  the  kin- 
ship is  not  close,  and  each  author 
is,  very  distinctly,  himself,  alone 
and  unique.  Their  community  of 
endowment  lies  in  the  ability  of 
each  one  to  gather  interest,  inspi- 
ration and  nourishment  of  the 
spirit  from  his  environment.  But 
Grayson  was  chiefly  interested  in 
man,  human  nature,  while  Ham- 
bidge turns  to  the  good  earth  and 
all  its  prolific  life  as  surely  as  the 
sunflower  to  the  sun. 

Those  who  read  his  former  book, 
"Time  to  Live,"  will  turn  eagerly 
to  this  new  volume,  the  second  in 
bis  charmingly  titled  series,  which 
is  to  centre  about  the  "farm"— 
which,  he  explains,  is  merely  an 
acre  and  a  quarter  on  a  stony  hill- 
top—the home  and  the  life  which  he 
and  his  wife  have  carved  out  of  the 
elementals,  while  they  have  made 
the  effort  afford  self-expression,  in- 
terest, freedom,  reasonable  leisure, 
satisfaction  and  happiness. 


While  the  first  volume  in  the 
series  outlined  the  general  story  of 
what  he  has  done  and  how  he  has 
done  it  on  the  practical  side  of 
realizing  this  purpose,  it  dealt  at 
length  also  with  the  philosophy  of 
life  he  has  worked  out,  how  he  has 
found  in  it  "time  to  live"  and  made 
it  yield  in  rare  measure  the  pleas- 
ures and  satisfactions  of  life,  this 
new  one  goes  into  the  matter  in 
more  detail  and  keeps  in  closer 
touch  with  the  earth. 

There  are  chapters  on  the  garden, 
the  orchard,  the  animal  life,  on  cer- 
tain adventures  with  bees  and 
goats,  the  general  subject  of  living 
on  the  land,  the  relations  between 
green  leaves  and  human  beings. 
With  both  practical  and  scientific 
knowledge  these  matters  are  con- 
sidered in  detail,  with  account  of 
how  he  works  at  each  one  and  fits 
it  into  his  scheme  of  life. 

As  Mr.  Hambidge  gets  toward  the 
end  of  a  chapter  on  "Green 
Leaves,"  wherein  he  has  talked 
about  subsistence  farming,  in  the 
economic  theory  and  aim  of  which 
he  has  very  little  confidence,  he 
dwells  on  the  satisfaction  he  gets 
from  the  modified  and  limited 
farming  he  does  in  his  back  yard 
and  describes  the  experiments  and 
achievements  of  some  of  his  friends 
who,  intellectual  workers,  are  also 
carving  out  homes  and  ways  of 
life  in  secluded  places.  Going  on 
to  discussion  of  how  leaves  live  and 
grow  and  the  importance  of  chlo- 
rophyl  for  vegetable  life,  and  so  for 
animal  life  and  human  life,  he  per- 


mits himself  a  bit  of  mystical  inter- 
pretation and  continues: 

It  would  be  easy  to  stress  a 
mystical  element  here,  namely, 
that  our  love  of  green  things, 
broad  green  landscapes,  trees, 
grass  is  based  on  something  more 
than  esthetic  appreciation  alone, 
that  is,  on  an  absolute  depen- 
dence on  green  things  for  life 
itself,  from  the  beginning  of  time, 
before  we  were  human  beings.  It 
seems  hardly  possible  that  this 
would  not  have  affected  our  atti- 
tude and  feelings— that  we  should 
not  have  had  a  love  of  green 
things  woven  into  us,  as  man  has 
a  love  of  the  body  of  woman  for 
equally  deep  reasons. 

"It  is  not  really,"  he  says,  "that 
this  acre  where  we  live  is  an  en- 
chanted acre  *  *  *  but  the  life  on 
it  has  had  the  quality  of  enchant- 
ment *  *  *  This  is  a  rare  thing— to 
feel  that  life  has  the  quality  of  en- 
chantment while  it  is  being  lived." 
So,  too,  is  it  a  rare  thing  for  an 
author  to  be  able  to  make  his  read- 
ers feel  some  measure  of  that  en- 
chantment and  to  understand  what 
it  means  for  him.  But  this  Mr. 
Hambidge  begins  doing  with  his 
first  page  and  keeps  on  doing  all 
through  his  "hodgepodge"  of  home- 
ly subjects,  excursions  into  philoso- 
phy, adventures  in  fancy,  touches 
of  humor,  to  the  last  page,  when 
one  stands  with  him  at  his  back 
porch,  looks  up  at  the  sky  thickly 
strewn  with  Winter  stars  and  be- 
lieves with  him  that  "these  things 
are  good  things  to  do  and  to  see." 
Florence  Finch  Kelly. 


Weeds 


Their    Place    in    the    Economy    of 
Nature 


Weeds.  By  W.  C.  Muenscher.  $6.00. 
New  York:     The  Macmillan   Company. 

A  WEED  is  not  always  a  useless, 
f\  ugly,  harmful  plant.  Behold 
A"\  the  black-eyed  Susans,  but- 
"^"  "^  tercups,  mountain  laurel, 
and  many  attractive  flowers  classed 
as  weeds.  A  weed  is  a  plant  which 
grows  where  it  is  not  wanted,  and 
usually  interferes  with  the  growth  of 
other  plants  that  -are  desired  and 
cultivated.  It  is  surprising  how 
weeds  will  thrive  under  adverse  cir- 
cumstances. They  are  good  travel- 
ers, though  they  have  no  power  of 
locomotion,  but  man  and  animals, 
wind  and  water  play  an  important 
part  in  their  dissemination.  Hay 
and  feed  stuffs,  ballast  from  freight 
cars  and  boats,  threshing  machines 
and  hay-balers,  manure  and  packing 
materials,  all  aid  and  abet  the  spread 
of  weeds.  Of  the  five  hundred  weeds 
described  in  this  volume,  196  only 
are  natives  of  North  America;  the 
rest  are  undesirable  immigrants. 
Weeds,  many  of  them,  act  as  hosts 
to  fungi  and  bacteria,  others  are 
poisonous  to  stock  or  injure  farm 
animals.  On  the  other  hand,  weeds 
plowed  under  add  humus  and  nu- 
trients to  the  soil;  some  of  them  fur- 
nish forage  for  animals  and  others 
are  edible  by  man.  A  long  list  of 
weeds  has  been  prepared  that  have 
medicinal  properties  and  are  used 
in  preparation  of  medicines  and 
drugs. 

largely,  however,  weeds  are  to  be 
fought,  killed,  exterminated  or  at 
least  controlled.  Por  preventing  the 
spread  of  weeds,  Dr.  Muenscher 
urges  clean  seed,  mowing  waste 
areas  early,  avoiding  the  scattering 
of  weed  seeds  by  farm  products  and 
machinery.  The  tops  of  weeds  may 
be  destroyed  by  all  kinds  of  hoeing, 
plowing,  harrowing,  mowing,  spud- 
ding, and  by  fire,  steam  and  chemical 
treatment.  Underground  parts  of 
weeds  may  be  destroyed  by  rotation 
of  crops,  drainage,  smother  crops, 
straw  mulch,  mulch  paper  and 
chemicals  such  as  sodium  chlorate, 
sodium  arsenite  and  carbon  bisulfide. 
A  whole  chapter  is  devoted  to  chemi- 
cal weed  control  which  is  fast  de- 
veloping into  a  major  and  very  effec- 
tive weapon.  This  whole  matter  is 
brought  thoroughly  up-to-date  by 
the  author. 

The  main  part  of  the  book  is  a 
botany  of  weeds.  Keys,  descriptions, 
illustrations    are    provided    for    the 


identification  of  weeds.  Also  a  para- 
graph is  added  to  the  description  of 
each  weed  showing  the  best  methods 
of  control  for  that  particular  weed. 
The  volume  is  a  valuable  aid  to  the 
gardener  and  farmer.  It  will  prove 
of  great  interest  also  to  any  student 
of  botany  and  offers  an  unusual 
hobby  for  a  summer's, study  in  the 
country  or  in  one's  own  back  yard. 
T.  C.  R. 


M 


FIVE  ACRES.  A  practical  guide 
to  the  selection  and  manage- 
ment of  the  small  farm.  By  M. 
G.  Kains.  Illustrated.  371  pp. 
New  York:  Greenberg,  pub- 
lisher.   $2.50. 

R.  KAINS  divides  the  people 
who  have  a  hankering  for 
a  few  acres  and  life  in  the 
country  into  two  classes, 
those  who  are  sure  to  fail  and  those 
who  may  succeed.  He  wants  with 
this  book,  he  says,  to  help  both 
classes  and  hopes  it  will  make  pos- 
sible success  for  both.  He  likens  its 
use  by  would-be  five-acre  farmers 
to  the  use  of  a  road  map  by  any  one 
taking  a  long  automobile  journey, 
because  he  endeavors  in  it  to  indi- 
cate safe  roads  to  follow  and  to 
warn  against  those  that  will  lead 
to  disappointment  and  perhaps  dis- 
aster. He  has  taken  especial  pains 
all  through  it  to  point  out  and  ad- 
vise against  the  mistakes  that  those 
who  are  not  familiar  with  farm 
work  and  country  life  are  likely  to 
make. 

The  early  chapters  are  taken  up 
with  consideration  of  the  advan- 
tages and  disadvantages  of  country 
life,  the  ways  of  beginning  and 
carrying  on  that  lead  to  failure, 
preliminary  matters  to  be  decided 
and  factors  to  be  looked  out  for. 
Then  come  questions  of  finance,  of 
water  supply,  sewage  disposal, 
what  livestock  can  be  kept,  what 
crops  grown,  the  planting  and  care 
of  gardens  and  orchards,  the  soil 
and  its  care,  and  so  on. 

Mr.  Kains,  who  is  special  crop 
culturist  in  the  United  States  De- 
partment of  Agriculture  , and  lec- 
turer on  horticulture  in  Columbia 
University,  evidently  is  thoroughly 
well  versed  in  both  the  scientific 
bases  of  farming  and  practical 
farm  work  and  his  detailed  advice 
and  explanation  on  every  topic 
treated  leave  little  chance  for  even 
the  ignorant  and  unskilled  person 
to  go  wrong  in  his  farming  opera- 
tions if  he  is  intelligent  enough  to 
trust  his  guide  and  follow  direc- 
tions. The  illustrations,  line  draw- 
ings in  the  text,  help  to  make  clear 
the  text. 


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ability  of  air-cool- 
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get  the  price  of  an 
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in  our  lin'e,"  Mr.ild 
<e  able  to  approach  an> 
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hoose  an  atr-cooled  ' 
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Tage  and  a  poten-  of 
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ted 

5MOKE  PIPES        As 

er- 
his    cunning-    little  >ar 
up  at  Will  Finkel-. 
match  for  my  new     " 

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Culture  "by  the  Acre" 

.  Field,  After  Research  Work  for  the  Government  in 
Finds  a  Way  to  Help  Solve  the  Farm  Problem 


mt  I  daresay  youM 

je  left  side  of  your 

:,   or  the  center,   it 

to  make  your  face 

noticed  that  When 
ijamas  and  light  up 
s  something  very 
it    a   corncob,    Isn't 

ne  a  good  book  and 
up  for  hours  at  a 
igue.  B-  the  way, 
ntown  Thursday  to 
co  bargains.     Want 

to — maybe    I'll    get 
myself  to  that  im- 

amber   combination 

:n  Newell's  window. 

W"ell,  so  long — don't 

ildn't  smoke. 

keep  the  home 
ti  "The  Spur  of  the 
Courier-Express 


By  William  E.  Brigham 


erosion  will  be  checked,  because  the  run- 
off water  can  be  held  within  the  speed 
limit,  which  strips  off  the  surface  soil 
and  deposits  it  in  the  rivers.  This  eroded 
material  is  kept  on  the  farm.  Whenever 
practicable,  this  can  be  supplemented,  in 
correct  quantities,  by  farm  and  munici- 
pal sewage,  thereby  manuring  the  water 
preparatory  to  manuring  the  farm  land. 
This  sewage,  scientifically  treated,  makes 
two  blades  of  grass  grow  where  one  grew 
before;  it  causes  thousands  of  micro- 
scopic plants  to  grow  where  one  grew 
before,  and,  best  of  all,  it  starts  a  new 
cycle  of  matter  wrherein  lifeless  material 
is  transformed  into  living  organisms; 
and  we  have  before  us  the  proof  that 
water,  soil  and  atmosphere  are  the  raw 
materials  of  life  and,  consequently,  the 
true  base  raw  materials  of  business. 

+     +     + 

Fish  culture  "by  the  acre"  is  the  dream 
of  Dr.  Field  for  the  American  farmer, 
and   hA  illun^*"*   "■  ■-«-    '    " 


ent  for  life.  Properly  treated  (and  all 
this  may  be  done  without  offense  to  the 
neighborhood),  the  outflow  of  liquid  after 
the  gas  had  been  taken  off,  and  before 
the  dry  residue  which  makes  such  excel- 
lent fertilizer  is  reached,  would  reinstate 
the  cycle  of  matter  which  is  the  law  of 
life.  As  the  flow  passes  off  into  the  water, 
the  vegetable  substances  are  broken  up 
by  bacteria,  which  then  become  the  in- 
fusoria upon  which  the  Crustacea  feed; 
and  these,  in  turn  almost  microscopic, 
become  the  foodi  of  the  fish.  It  is  the 
working  out  of  this  beneficent  cycle  that 
is  illustrated  in  the  German  ponds. 

+     +     + 

For  the  American  farmer,  especially 
in  the  States  of  the  Mississippi  Valley, 
where  conditions  are  practically  ideal, 
Dr.  Field  urges  a  scientific  yet  easy 
utilization  of  the  waters  which  come 
down  from  above  upon  his  own  land,  or 
flow    +^~~ - — »-     ■<-    ' 


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Already  in  those  distant  millenniums  the  Chinese 
knew  "ta-teon"  as  a  plant  of  almost  miraculous 
diverse  uses.  When  floods  damprotted  or  drought 
destroyed  the  grain  crops,  the  healthy  and  imper- 
turbable soybean  vine  rarely  fell  below  half  its 
yield,  so  that  generation  after  generation  came  to 
know  it  as  its  mainstay  against  famine.  As  the 
wild  hunt  animals  died  off  on  the  Chinese  prairies 
and  the  human  population  crowded  out  the  domestic 
livestock,  the  soybean  became  recognized  as  the 
vegetable  that  gave  strength  to  millions  whose 
meatless  days  lasted  for  centuries. 


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Meanwhile  soybean  acreage 
climbed  with  the  markets.  There 
were  1,000,000  acres  in  1922,  close 
to  2,500,000  acres  in  1928,  4,000,000 
acres  in  1934.  The  Agricultural 
Department's  experimenters  and 
technicians  were  finding  out  new 
and  favorable  things  about  the  "lit- 
tle honorable  plant"  as  fast  as  the 
industrial  laboratories.  If  the  right 
varieties  were  chosen,  it  was  speed- 
ily demonstrated,  it  would  grow 
anywhere  from  the  blizzard-strick- 
en prairies  of  North  Dakota  to  the 
sub-tropics  of  the  Gulf  Coast 
Delta;  from  the  sandy  soils  of  re- 
cently reclaimed  deserts  to  the 
stony  soils  of  New  England. 

The  idea  of  its  soil-building  prop- 
erties proved  to  be  no  ancient  Chi- 
nese superstition.  The  "wonder 
bean"  restored  nitrogen  to  the  soil, 
replenished  the  phosphates;  plowed 
under,  it  made  the  most  efficient 
of  all  vegetable  fertilizers. 

Wherever  the  post-war  farmer 
has  turned,  in  short,  he  has  found 
another  argument  for  planting 
soybeans,  and  to  make  last  year's 
bumper  crop,  600,000  farms  in 
twenty-seven  States  grew  them.  In 
its  boom  years  of  the  nineteen- 
thirties  the  less-than-lima-sized 
morsel  definitely  became  "big 
business." 


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PLANT  EXPERT  DERIDES 
OLD  GARDENING  CODES 


If  They  Fail  to  Aid  Propagation 

Violate  Them  Deliberately, 

Says  Dr.  Crocker. 


If  rigid  adherence  to  the  time- 
honored  codes  of  practical  garden- 
ers does  not  bring  success  in  plant 
propagation,  try  deliberate  violations 
of  those  laws,  Dr.  William  Crocker, 
director  of  the  Boyce  Thompson  In- 
stitute for  Plant  Research,  advised 
his  audience  during  a  lecture  at  the 
Museum  Building  in  the  New  York 
Botanical  Garden,  Bronx  Park,  yes- 
terday. 

As  an  example,  he  said  that  in  set- 
ting out  soft-wood  cuttings,  the  pre- 
scribed practice  was  to  strip  most  of 
the  leaves,  apparently  on  the  theory 
that  they  absorbed  nourishment 
needed  for  the  coming  roots. 

However,  he  said,  extensive  experi- 
ments have  proved  that  the  leaves 
provide  the  nourishment  the  roots 
must  have,  and  should  be  clipped 
only  in  those  rare  cases  where  they 
exhaust  the  moisture  in  the  soil  too 
rapidly.  In  a  number  of  cases,  he 
said,  the  greatest  success  had  been 
obtained  by  leaving  on  all  possible 
leaves  and  burying  some  of  them  in 
the  soil.  A  reason  he  advanced  for 
the  frequent  abandonment  of  old 
methods  was  that  there  are  hardly 
two  plants  which  should  be  grown 
under  identical  circumstances. 

"Nurserymen  used  to  say,"  Dr. 
Crocker  remarked,  "that  a  practical 
way  of  raising  holly  would  be  worth 
a  million  dollars  to  any  one.  The  old 
belief  was  that  holly  seeds  would  not 
germinate  except  in  a  state  of  na- 
jture.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  they  ger- 
minate very  well,  but  usually  only 
after  a  period  of  eighteen  months  to 
two  years." 

Rhododendrons  are  now  being  prop- 
igated  in  this  country  for  the  first 
ime,  Dr.  Crocker  said,  a  fact  which 
vill  be  pleasant  news  to  many  gar- 
deners, since  the  supply  which  for- 
nerly  came  from  Europe  is  cut  off 
Dy  quarantine. 


small  parcel. 

Herb  Growing  and  Cooking 

L.  B.,  New  York  City,  and 
H.  B.,  Ithaca,  N.  Y.,  ask  for 
Christmas  books  on  herbs,  their 
use  and  cultivation. 

There  is  a  beautiful  one  by  Henry 
Beston,  "Herbs  and  the  Earth"  (Dou- 
bleday),  good  to  read  even  if  your 
resources  go  no  further  than  a  win- 
dow box,  and  practical  if  you  can 
actually  plant.  "Gardening  With 
Herbs,"  by  Helen  Fox  (Macmillan), 
describes  sixty-eight  herbs  for  flavor 
and  fragrance  and  has  lovely  pic- 
tures. Maud  Grieve's  "Modern  Herbal" 
(Harcourt)  is  the  one  you  will  prob- 
ably come  to  if  you  get  involved  in 
this  subject,  which  seldom  lets  you 
go;  it  is  a  handsome,  comprehensive 
and  scholarly  work,  costing  ten  dol- 
lars;    the    same     author's    "Culinary 

!  Herbs    and    Condiments"     (Harcourt) 
'  is    a    briefer,    less    expensive    guide. 
;  Houghton    Mifflin    has    recently    pub- 
lished    Marcus     Woodward's     "Leaves 
From    Gerard's    Herbal"     (1597),    ar- 
ranged   from    this    famous    work    to 
form    a    garden    calendar.      Two   tiny 
i  books    on   this   subject   will    get   any 
one    interested    in    it:    "Thirty    Herbs 
Will  Make  an  Herb  Garden"  and  "Ten 
Herbs  Will  Make  a  Kitchen  Bouquet"; 
they  are  by  Helen  Lyman,  published 
|  by   the   author,   Ganta   Clara   Avenue 
;  Oakland,  Calif.     The  first  gives  basic 
principles   of    cultivation    and    has    a 
!  packet  of  mixed  seeds  attached;    the 
i  second   is   about   simple   cookery   and 
has  a  paper  of  mixed  ground  herbs; 
as  time  is  short,  I  add  that  the  first 
costs  a  quarter  and  the  second  thir- 
ty-five cents. 


TO  PRESERVE  NUT  MEATS 


Agriculture     Bureau    Offers     Easy 
Method    for    Use    in    Homes. 


A  new  home  method  for  keeping 
nut    meats    fresh— using    a    water 
I  bath  canner  such  as   many  house- 
wives use  to  process  fruits— is  an-  j 
nounced  by  the  United  States  De-  j 
partment  of  Agriculture. 

Many  farm  families  who  make  a 
Winter  industry  of  preparing 
shelled  nuts  for  sale  or  home  use, 
often  take  a  loss  when  warm 
weather  causes  the  oil  in  the  nuts 
to  become  rancid.  Commercial  con- 
cerns avoid!  this  stalenenss  or  ran- 
cidity, caused  by  light  and  heat  in 
combination  with  air,  by  vacuum 
packing  the  nut  meats. 

The  only  equipment  needed  for 
vacuum  packing  nut  meats  at 
home,  says  R.  C.  Wright  of  the 
Bureau  of  Plant  Industry,  who  de- 
veloped the  method,  is  glass  fruit 
jars  to  hold  the  nuts  and  the  water 
bath  canner  to  exhaust  the  air  from 
the  jars.   He  says: 

"Fill  glass  jars  with  nut  meats 
and  adjust  the  glass  lids  and  rub- 
bers but  do  not  tighten  them.  Set 
the  jars  in  a  water  bath  canner— 
either  a  clothes  boiler  or  a  big  ket- 
tle with  a  rack  on  the  bottom.  Use 
enough  water  to  reach  almost  to 
the  top  of  the  jars.  Keep  the  water 
boiling  for  15  or  20  minutes.  Then 
seal  the  jars  and  leave  them  in  the 
water  until  it  begins  to  cool.  Store 
the  jars  in  a  dark  room  or  cover  to 
keep  them  from  the  light.  Thus 
processed,  nut  meats  will  keep 
fresh  even  during  hot  weather." 


^»    t\<><>.» 


( — <u* 


keeping  the  plants  out  of  water  upon 
a  wire  mesh  and  letting  the  roots  of 
the  plants  strike  down  into  water.  I 
That  worked  fairly  well  but  still  seeds 
could  not  be  germinated  well  and 
such  things  as  potatoes  would  not 
grow. 
Finally,  the  present  plan  was 
1  erais— iron   cm  <  devised.     The    tank    is   filled    with 

I  Phorus,  Jodinp       i    '  nitrogen water  and  a  fine  meshed  netting  is 
Most  soils  r<w  •  phur  and  ti  spread  just  an  inch  or  so  over  the 
they  are  Jack-fn    ♦?  these»  anc water.   The  water  level  is  maintained 
?  they  can  be  si  automatically   below   the    mesh   by 


grown  year  aft^r  '  as  PJan  means  of  a  mechanical  gadget.  Then 
exhausted  anri iVv,year-  s°iis  ba  blanket  of  sawdust  and  other 
fertilizers  nePr?  k  ^  more  and  fibrous  materials  is  spread  over  the 

probably  more  fprHHSed-    ***>  wire.    On  this  the  seeds,  or  potato 

*£e  ground  than  i.      ?  js  ^asteyes 

the  r.7Q>,*-     ..  Jan  iS  actually  ...  v i 


On  this  the  seeds,  or  potato 
are    spread.      Then,    another 


*£e  ground  than  ^  r  is  wasf  eves  are  spread.  Then,  another  ^ 
the  Plants,  this  Ln  actually  us(  blanket  of  sawdust,  wood  fibers  and  J 
Pensive  biisiness-~-r  „ecomes  a]  the  like,  is  spread  over  all.  k 

farmer's  *r*ctloi^g™S*°wn  fSSd  ot  certain  minerals,  the  plants  ^S 
Plan?f   a]I    thi*   mSl   fn°th  would  be  stunted.    If  they  had  too  ^ 
Piants  must   first    ho   I-    food    much  food  or  too  much  of  a  certain     j 
^in  ^e  soif  bebfe   dlf^ved   ^nt    the   plants   would    go    to    / 

o^ousketnatUp  ^  SS  roots^  ^  «*  stemS  ^  M  ^f^  ^ 
can  tein*  i'-  P^ded  the  5  2t  enough   fruit  or   flowers.     But    by 
no  re2^nPPued  adequately  «£?*  exactly     maintaining 
Y  rea«on  why  soil  «Miei7»  there  u^amrf>    the  nlants  t 


no  Vfi?.     ppiled  adequate  v  £ ier<  exactly     maintaining     tne     proper 
no  reason  why  soil  225  ?'  there  Stance    the  plants  are  kept  right 
a"d  ^PV^teSta^/5n^SSdule  aPnd  bear  amazingly,     < 
need.      d   them  «>e  minSag^     Harvesting   is   even  more   ample  d 

^at  is  the  ldPa    .  ■ than  grOWing'     —  -~-  ™  -  '-  ^ 

farmings™ /dea  of  the 


than  growing.     There  is  no  back- 


*3Sa 


understood,  hot 
Mean  agricultura 
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shn^iand    P]ans 

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secret  at  all  rn  1 
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««e  narcissus  bulbs 

died  and  ~L?      mosl 
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^^  the  plan  was  hif 

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are  simply  cut  off  down  to  the  level  / 
of  the  blanket   and   then   the   top  r 
layer  of  the  blanket  is  peeled  off,  J 
exposing    the    tubers    ready    to    beT 
kicked   vn-^S^J^S.    TgfrF&'S 


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p^SSp. 


7-»  *■ 


3.3 


tne 


n^ 


VI   CD 


2  pi  <5  d  e 

3S"_S* 

vines, 

msects  "chew  them  up   or  diseases 

8TS  S  them  before  they  are  ™>*de 

pUns'   Rpkns    cabbage,  lettuce,  also  have 

tKftSSSd  oSrsuccessfully  and,  as  for 

^"^    s^awberries  -  tests      upon      Dr. 

KEENI  GerSe's  berries  have  shown  them 

7  St  only  to  be  sweeter  and  juicier 

"T!  SSd  Wgger  than  fleld-gi jown  berries 

real  but  also  to  have  at  least  an  eq^ 

torL  content    of    vitamines    and    food 

SoVf  VwS;t  Dr.  Gericke  and  others  have 

1  done  with  vegetables  and •  flora?; 

J  other  scientiste  are  doing  ^d^ 


w- 


ds" 


Test -Tube  Truck  Farms 

Condensed  from  The  Commentator 
Arthur  W,  Baum 


The  day  when  you  can  go 
down  to  a  little  truck  garden 
in  the  basement  and  pick 
your  own  fresh  greens  and  vege- 
tables for  dinner  may  not  yet  be 
at  hand  —  but  there  is  promise  in 
the  air. 

In  practically  every  agricultural 
college,  in  government  experi- 
mental stations,  in  the  Bureau  of 
Plant  Industry,  plant  physiolo- 
gists today  are  growing  full  qual- 
ity, heavily  productive  foods  and 
flowers  without  a  vestige  of  soil. 
Consider  a  tomato  plant  25  feet 
high,  with  fruit  from  one  end  to 
the  other  —  the  whole  growing  on 
nothing  more  than  a  three-inch 
layer  of  excelsior  and  sawdust  sus- 
pended on  a  wire  mesh  over  a  shal- 
low pan  of  water. 

Years  ago  it  was  understood 
that  soil  is  simply  a  medium  from 
which  plants  extract  chemicals; 
that  if  the  necessary  chemicals 
were  made  available  to  plant  roots 
by  some  other  means  than  soil, 
the  results  were  just  as  good. 

But  it  was  not  until  after  the 
war  that  investigation  speeded 
up.  Two  branches  of  research  un- 
folded: sand  culture  and  water 
culture.  The  sand  culturists  placed 
their  plants  in  clean,  washed  sand 


and  flooded  the  beds  with  solu- 
tions containing  feeding  chemi- 
cals. The  water  culturists  laid 
mats  of  excelsior,  sawdust  or  prac- 
tically any  porous  and  absorbent 
material  on  wire  meshes  over  pans 
of  nutrient  solutions  so  that  the 
plant  roots  could  dangle  in  the 
feedbox  and  enjoy  an  endless 
meal. 

Foremost  among  the  water  cul- 
turists is  Professor  F.  W.  Gericke, 
associate  plant  physiologist  of  the 
University  of  California.  Step  by 
step  he  probed  the  chemical  needs 
of  growing  plants.  Then  he  laid 
electric  heating  cables  in  his  solu- 
tion tanks,  dissolving  the  chemi- 
cals at  a  carefully  accelerated 
pace  and  —  produced  the  miracle. 
Gericke  tobacco  climbed  20  feet. 
Potato  plants  deposited  hundreds 
of  clean  white  tubers.  Onions 
grew  three  deep.  The  plant  world 
was  literally  on  a  spree. 

A  tomato  patch  in  reasonably 
good  farming  country  can  yield 
live  tons  of  tomatoes  per  acre  in  a 
season.  Professor  Gericke's  toma- 
toes, on  an  acre  basis,  bore  more 
than  200  tons!  Further,  he  had 
ripe  fruit  in  four  months  and  a 
continuous  bearing  plant  for  the 
ensuing  nine  months.  Harvest  ev- 


©  J937i  Pay  son  Publishing,  Inc.,  101  Park  Ave.,  N.T.C.  The  Commentator,  a  new  monthly  edited 

by  Lowell  'Thomas,  aims  to  provide  a  medium  for  the  men  and  women  who  have  won 

wide   audiences   through  the   microphone  to   express   themselves   in    more 

enduring  form  and  without  the  censorship  necessary  in  radio  77 


THE  READER'S  DIGEST 


ery  day  for  three  quarters  of  a 
year!  Ordinary  potato  growers  on 
the  farm  secure  120  bushels  to  a 
crop.  Gericke  potatoes  made  an 
acre  crop  of  2465  bushels! 

Sand  culture  too,  has  its  mira- 
cles. In  England,  a  while  back,  a 
dairy  group  was  sprouting  corn  in 
cabinets,  drawing  out  each  day  a 
shelf  of  fodder  and  replanting  for 
the  next  crop  to  come  along  in 
just  ten  days.  At  the  New  Jersey 
Agricultural  Experiment  Station, 
1  )r.  Rohbins  has  cotton  plants  with 
beautiful  bolls  growing  in  small 
pots  of  pure  sand.  He  has  had  to- 
mato plants  climbing  out  through 
the  greenhouse  ventilators. 

The  new  chemical  agriculture 
is  more  than  a  laboratory  freak. 
The  chemicals  are  cheap,  and  com- 
paratively little  water  is  needed. 
On  the  basis  of  Gericke  results  it 
is  possible  to  put  an  acre  under 
glass  on  the  edge  of  a  city,  and 
thus  produce  crops  that  now  re- 
quire a  40-acre  truck  farm.  Al- 
ready there  are  four  commercial 
installations  of  the  Gericke  proc- 
ess in  California.  And  this  past 
year  some  citizens  of  San  Fran- 
cisco have,  whether  they  knew  it  or 
not,  purchased  ripe  tomatoes  that 
were  not  born  of  earth;  business 
men  raised  them  by  factory  meth- 
ods and  marketed  them  at  a  profit. 


For  the  moment  jjie^commer 
cial  direction  of  water  culture  is 
toward  Arizona,  New  Mexico  anc 
Florida.   In    the   populous   East 
where  the  development  would  be 
most  useful,  it  runs  up  against  ex 
cessive  heating  and  lighting  costs 
—  due    to    erratic    weather    anc 
long  winters.  But  electricity  is  be 
coming  cheaper  every  year  anc 
experience  shows   tnat  costs  in 
variably  decrease  as  an  enterprise 
grows. 

However,  there  is  no  apparent 
prospect  for  a  vast  and  rapid  shift 
from  land  to  greenhouse  factory 
with  resultant  economic  disturb 
ances.  Eastern  capital  is  definitel 
interested    in    the    sawdust-and 
water  vegetable  kingdom,  but  it 
present  status  is  somewlfet  that  oi 
a  rich  man's  toy  —  to  produce  ex 
pensive  products  for  the  carriage 
trade,  ft-ofessor  Gaelic  frankly 
states  that  in  the  growing  of  grair 
the  chemical  croppefc^nnot  com 
pete  with  the  farmed  that  he  ma) 
encroach  on  the  orchardist  onh 
in  a  few  semi-tropical  trees.  Th 
first  assault  on  established  agri 
culture   will   be   a   tentative  om 
upon  truck  gardeners.  And  man) 
truck  gardeners  are  already  in  th 
routine  hothouse  business  and  sc 
are  ready  to  take  over  the  nev 
development. 


^\_yhe  mind  is  like  the  stomach.  It  is  not 
how  much  you  put  into  it  that  counts^  but 
bow  much  it  digests.  —  Albert  Jay  Nock 


Health  from  the  Ground  Up 

Condensed  from  Hearst's  International-Cosmopolitan 
Rex  Beach 


D 


o  you  know  that  most  of 
us  suffer  from  dangerous 
diet  deficiencies  which 
cannot  be  remedied  until  the  de- 
pleted soils  from  which  our  foods 
come  are  brought  into  proper 
mineral  balance?  No  man  today 
can  eat  enough  fruits  and  vege- 
tables to  supply  his  system  with 
the  mineral  salts  he  requires  for 
perfect  health,  because  his  stom- 
ach isn't  big  enough  to  hold  them! 

One  carrot  may  look  and  taste 
like  another  and  yet  lack  the  par- 
ticular mineral  element  carrots 
are  supposed  to  contain.  Vegeta- 
tion grown  in  one  part  of  the  coun- 
try -may  assay  noo  parts,  per 
billion,  of  iodine,  as  against  20  in 
that  grown  elsewhere. 

Any  considerable  lack  of  essen- 
tial mineral  elements,  and  we 
sicken,  suffer,  shorten  our  lives. 
And  the  alarming  fact  is  that  our 
fruits,  vegetables,  grains  and 
meats  are  now  being  raised  on 
millions  of  acres  of  land  that  no 
longer  contains  enough  of  these 
minerals. 

The  first  man  to  demonstrate 
this  was  Dr.  Charles  Northen,  an 
Alabama  physician  who  had  spe- 
cialized in  nutritional  disorders. 
He  became  convinced  that  we 
must  make  soil  building  the  basis 

©  1936,  Hearst  Magazines,  Inc. 
(Hearst's  International- 


of  food  building  if  we  are  to  use 
foods  intelligently  in  the  treat- 
ment of  disease. 

"We  know  that  vitamins  are 
indispensable  to  nutrition,"  says 
Dr.  Northen,  "but  it  is  not  com- 
monly realized  that  vitamins  con- 
trol the  body's  appropriation  of 
minerals,  and  in  the  absence  of 
minerals  they  have  no  function. 
Lacking  vitamins,  the  system  can 
make  some  use  of  minerals,  but 
lacking  minerals,  vitamins  are 
useless !  We  have  been  systemati- 
cally robbing  soils  of  the  very  sub- 
stances necessary  to  growth  and 
resistance  to  disease.  Up  to  the 
time  I  began  experimenting,  al- 
most nothing  had  been  done  to 
make  good  the  theft." 

Dr.  Northen  retired  from  medi- 
cal practice  to  devote  himself  to 
this  subject.  By  putting  back  into 
soils  the  stuff  that  foods  are  made 
of,  he  raised  better  seed  potatoes 
in  Maine,  better  grapes  in  Cali- 
fornia, better  oranges  in  Florida, 
and  better  field  crops  in  other 
states  —  better  not  only  in  im- 
proved food  value  but  also  in  in- 
creased quality  and  quantity.  He 
doubled  and  redoubled  the  nat- 
ural mineral  content  of  fruits  and 
vegetables.  He  improved  the  qual- 
ity of  milk  by  increasing  the  iron 

.,  57  St.  at  Eighth  Ave.,  N.  T.  C. 
Cosmopolitan,  June,  'j6) 


937 


I  ^FINISHED  BUSINESS 


a  humble  living;  if*  I  mu  as  vir- 

II  sonic  of   the  heroes  of 
polii  is   history,   I 

might   l>ecome  great  or  rich, 

thing  new  and  big 

In    the  arts   and   sciences 
tru  .  n,  from  older 

ma  .   larship  was  the  aim, 

not  j .  Duty,  not  adven- 

ture; work,  not  play,  in  a  dull 

:  M,  all  done.  And  it  was  all  a  lie. 
all  never  forget  the  thrill  I 
had  when  I  happened  to  read  sev- 
eral historians  on  one  episode,  and 
that    they    differed    on    the 
facts  of  the  episode.  On  all  great 

:its  they  did  not  al  :  so  I 

saw,  with  elation,  that  there  was 
a  job  for  us  hoys  in  history.  And 
not  to  learn  hut  to  make  history, 
to  write  histon  .  chapter 

had,  and  has,  to  be  worked  over 

.  written  over  again/ 
The  discovery  opened  mv  eyes 
to  the  other  branches'  of  "learn- 
dert,  curious  again,  as 
1  was  at  birth.  And  when  ]  heard 
some  coll  great  men, 

greater  than  I  could  ever  hope  to 
be  —  expose    the    startling    fact 


that  they  did  not  know  or  could 
not  agree  on  what  knowledge  is, 
in  science,  and  on  what  was  right, 
in  ethics,  I  went  off —  a  student, 
at  last  —  to  some  European  uni- 
versities where,  like  my  little  boy 
at  the  faucet,  happily  I  learned 
that  the  great  grownups  of  Europe 
also  did  not  know  plumbing  or 
anything,  positively. 

Then,  at  home  again,  came  a 
sense  of  elation  with  the  real- 
ization that  here  were  opportuni- 
ties, millions  of  jobs,  big  jobs  and 
small  jobs  for  all  us  kids,  young 
kids  and  old  kids,  if  only  we  could 
be  saved  from  the  old  illusions 
and  fairy  tales  and  taught  to  see 
things  as  they  are,  straight,  as 
solvable  unsolved  problems  and 
opportunities.  Tife  became  worth 
living.  Life  is  worth  living. 

Now,  let  me  repeat  that*  this, 
my  acquired  view  of  the  world  as 
all  unknown  and  undone,  or  half 
done  or  wrongly  done,  was  good 
for  me;  it  is  good  for  my  boy,  and 
I  think  it  will  be  good  for  all  boys 
and  girls.  It  gives  purpose  to  their 
studies,  to  their  play,  to  their 
work. 


Csllustrativ€  A  necdotes —  VII — 

fcYBODY  thought  that  Marshal  Joffre  had  won  the 

first  battle  pi  the  Marne,  hut  some  refused  to  agree.  One  day  a  news- 

•   man  appealed  to  Jorfre:  "Will  you  tell  me  who  did  win  the 

•  "f  ™  Man  .n't  answer  that,"  said  the  Marshal. 

"  Hut  I  dUl  tell  you  that  if  the  battle  of  the  Marne  had  been  lost  the 

blame  would  have  been  on  me."  —  Quoted  in  News-Week 


-»% 


HEALTH  FROM  THE  GROUND  UP 


and  iodine  in  it.  He  caused  hens 
to  lay  eggs  richer  in  the  vital 
elements. 

At  least  1 6  mineral  elements  are 
indispensable  for  normal  nutri- 
tion. Of  these,  calcium,  phosphorus 
and  iron  are  perhaps  the  most  im- 
portant. Calcium  affects  the  cell 
formation  and  regulates  nerve  ac- 
tion. It  coordinates  the  other 
mineral  elements  and  corrects  dis- 
turbances made  by  them.  Among 
the  actual  diseases  that  may  re- 
sult from  calcium  deficiency  are 
rickets,  bony  deformities,  bad 
teeth  and  nervous  disorders.  Phos- 
phorus is  also  exceedingly  impor- 
tant. Dr.  McCollum  of  Johns 
Hopkins  says  that  when  there  are 
enough  phosphates  in  the  blood 
there  can  be  no  dental  decay !  Iron 
is  an  essential  constituent  of  the 
oxygen-carrying  pigment  of  the 
blood;  but  iron  cannot  be  assim- 
ilated unless  some  copper  is  con- 
tained in  the  diet.  And  if  iodine 
is  not  present,  goiter  afflicts  us. 

So  each  mineral  element  plays  a 
definite  role.  The  human  system 
cannot  appropriate  those  elements 
to  the  best  advantage  in  any  but 
the  food  form.  So  we  must  rebuild 
our  soils:  put  back  the  minerals 
we  have  taken  out.  It  isn't  diffi- 
cult or  expensive.  By  re-estab- 
lishing a  proper  soil  balance  Dr. 
Northen  has  shown  he  could  grow 
crops  that  contained  enough  de- 
sired minerals. 

I  met  him  because  I  was  har- 
assed   by   soil   problems   on   my 


Florida  farm  which  had  baffled  the 
best  experts.  "A  healthy  plant," 
he  told  me,  "grown  in  soil  prop- 
erly balanced,  can  and  will  resist 
most  insect  pests.  You  have  germs 
in  your  system  but  you're  strong 
enough  to  throw  them  off.  Simi- 
larly, a  really  healthy  plant  will 
take  care  of  itself  against  insects 
and  blights  —  and  will  also  give 
the  human  system  what  it  re- 
quires." 

When  Dr.  Northen  restored  the 
mineral  balance  to  part  of  the  soil 
in  an  orange  grove  infested  with 
scale,  the  trees  in  that  part  became 
clean  while  the  rest  remained  dis- 
eased. By  the  same  means  he  had 
grown  healthy  rosebushes  between 
rows  that  were  riddled  by  insects. 
He  had  grown  tomato  and  cucum- 
ber plants,  both  healthy  and  dis- 
eased, where  the  vines  intertwined. 
The  bugs  ate  the  diseased  plants 
and  refused  to  touch  the  healthy 
ones!  He  showed  me  analyses  of 
citrus  fruit,  the  chemistry  and  the 
food  value  of  which  accurately 
reflected  the  soil  treatment  the 
trees  had  received. 

I  took  his  advice  and  fed  min- 
erals into  land  where  I  was  grow- 
ing a  large  acreage  of  celery.  When 
the  plants  from  this  soil  were  ma- 
ture I  had  them  analyzed,  along 
with  celery  from  other  parts  of 
the  state.  My  celery  had  more 
than  twice  the  mineral  content  of 
the  best  grown  elsewhere;  and  it 
kept  much  better,  proving  that 
the  cell  structure  was  sounder. 


THE  READER'S  DIGEST 


In  1927,  W.  W.  Kincaid,  a  "gen- 
tleman farmer"  of  Niagara  Falls, 
heard  an  address  by  Dr.  Northen 
and  was  so  impressed  that  he  be- 
gan extensive  experiments.  He 
has  succeeded  in  adding  both  io- 
dine and  iron  to  soil  so  liberally 
that  one  glass  of  milk  from  his 
cows  contains  all  of  the  minerals 
that  an  adult  requires  for  a  day. 

"It  is  neither  a  complicated  nor 
an  expensive  undertaking  to  re- 
store our  soils  to  balance,"  says 
Dr.  Northen.  "Any  competent 
soil  chemist  can  tell  you  how  to 
proceed.  First  determine  by  an- 
alysis the  precise  chemistry  of 
any  given  soil,  then  correct  the 
deficiencies  by  putting  down  the 
missing  elements.  The  same  care 

•  should  be  used  as  in  prescribing 
for  a  sick  patient,  for  proportions 
are  of  vital  importance. 

"A  nutrition  authority  recent- 

*  ly  said,  'One  sure  way  to  end  the 
American  people's  susceptibility 


to  infection  is  to  supply  through- 
food  a  balanced  ration  of  iron, 
copper  and  other  metals.  An  or- 
ganism supplied  with  a  diet  ade- 
quate to,  or  preferably  in  excess 
of,  all  mineral  requirements  may 
so  utilize  these  elements  as  to  pro- 
duce immunity  from  infection 
quite  beyond  anything  we  are  at 
present  able  to  produce  artificially. 
You  can't  make  up  the  deficiency 
by  using  patent  medicine.' 

"Happily,  we're  on  our  way  to 
better  health  by  returning  to  the 
soil  the  things  we  have  stolen 
from  it.  The  public  can  hasten  the 
change  by  demanding  quality  in 
its  food,  insisting  that  health  de- 
partments establish  scientific  stand- 
ards of  nutritional  value.  The 
growers  will  quickly  respond.  They 
can  put  back  those  minerals  al- 
most overnight. 

"It  is  simpler  to  cure  sick  soils 
than  to  cure  sick  people.  Which 
shall  we  choose?" 


dKadtcals  mio  K^onservahves 

y~i  Labor  government  in  England  started  a  wave  for  greater 
social  security,  for  the  abolition  of  slums,  and  a  Conservative  gov- 
ernment carried  the  policies  further.  It  carried  them,  indeed,  so 
far  that  it  rebuilt  England,  and  rehoused  the  nation;  and  the  re- 
sult is  that  on  November  2nd  the  British  county  elections  turned 
in  an  overwhelmingly  Conservative  majority.  For  men  and  women 
who  have  security  in  their  jobs  and  in  their  old  age,  who  fear  no 
humiliation  of  public  charity  if  they  are  unemployed,  who  live  in 
decent  houses,  and  have  gardens,  become  conservatives,  having 
something  to  conserve. 

—  Dorothy  Thompson  in  N.  Y.  Herald  tribune 


\ 


~*% 


Tt~'W~ 


( dy.-..  l*.Ci 


'  rC*-"^""*** 


The  "Food  of  the  Gods 
Comes  True 


DR.  O.  W.  Willcox  has  for  some  years  been 
writing  books  about  the  new  science  of 
"Agrobiology,"  which  makes  possible  enormous  in- 
creases in  productivity  of  the  soil  through  new 
technical  methods.  Some  of  his  predictions  have 
been  criticized,  by  Secretary  Wallace  among  other 
people,  as  being  excessive.  Striking  confirmation 
of  Dr.  Willcox's  general  theory  now  comes  from 
California  in  the  form  of  a  report  by  Dr.  W.  F. 
Gericke,  associate  plant  physiologist  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  California.  Dr.  Gericke  has  been  grow- 
ing tomato  plants  fifteen  feet  high  and  tobacco 
twenty  feet  high.  He  has  produced  217  tons  of 
tomatoes  per  acre  arid  has  grown  2,465  bushels  of 
potatoes — against  a  United  States  average  at  pres- 
ent of  116  bushels.  Many  other  vegetables  have 
responded  similarly,  and  striking  results  have  also 
been  achieved  with  flowers. 

Under  Dr.  Gericke's  method,  plants  are  not  set 
into  the  earth  at  all.  Shallow  tanks  are  filled  with 
a  liquid  composed  of  some  ten  chemicals,  all  of 
them  readily  available  in  commerce,  and  this  liquid 
is  heated  by  electricity  or  otherwise.  Over  the  tanks 
is  spread  a  wire  screen  covered  with  straw,  excelsior 
or  moss,  in  which  the  seeds  are  planted,  thrusting 
their  roots  down  into  the  liquid  below.  The  growth 
takes  place  in  unheated  greenhouses  or,  in  the 
proper  season,  out  of  doors.  The  products  of  this 
process  are  of  high  quality,  and  in  the  case  of  to- 
bacco it  is  possible  to  avoid  the  rankness  that 
sometimes  accompanies  rapid  growth  under  natural 
conditions.  That  this  plan  is  not  a  toy  of  the  labora- 
tory is  shown  by  the  fact  that  tomatoes  produced 
under  Dr.  Gericke's  method  are  now  being  sold  on 
the  California  market,  at  normal  prices  and  at  a 
commercial  profit. 

Forty  years  ago,  H.  G.  Wells  wrote  a  scientific 
romance,  "The  Food  of  the  Gods,"  in  which  he 
predicted  a  development  of  this  sort,  which  changed 
the  whole  structure  of  society.  He  may  yet  live  to 
sec  his  prediction  come  true,   for  possibilities  of 


these  new  agricultural  techniques  seem  almost 
boundless.  Already  we  are  hearing  stories  of  an 
occasional  scientist  who  is  said  to  grow  a  year's  sup- 
ply of  potatoes  for  a  large  family  in  a  tin  pan  under 
the  kitchen  table.  It  is  possible  to  envisage  all  the 
vegetable  foods  for  a  huge  New  York  apartment 
house  being  produced  in  a  small  space  on  the  roof 
— unless,  indeed,  food  became  so  cheap  and  so  easy 
to  produce  that  everyone  moved  to  the  country. 
There  is  as  a  matter  of  fact  no  especial  reason  why 
we  should  not  have  skyscraper  farms,  on  which  the 
rows  of  shallow  pans  would  be  stacked  one  above 
the  other  to  a  height  of  a  hundred — or  a  thousand 
— feet,  and  reached  by  elevators.  What  such  a 
development  would  do  to  5,000,000  farm  families, 
and  to  the  millions  of  other  persons  who  get  their 
livelihood  from  the  present  agricultural  economy,  is 
a  vista  as  exciting  as  it  is  terrifying.  Certainly,  the 
California  experiments  bring  us  one  step  nearer  to 
that  famous  "economy  of  abundance,"  and  make  it 
still  more  absurd  that  millions  of  people  should 
continue  to  go  hungry. 


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TOMATOES  GROWN 
„  IN  TANKS  OF  WATER 

No  Soil  Used,  bat  Chemicals  Aid 

'Caltare'  and  It  Is  All  for 

Experimental  Parposes 

WOOSTER,  Ohio,  May  1  UP).- 
Rows  of  hardy  green  tomato  plants 
nod  sleepily  in  long  wooden  tanks 
through  which  clear  water  slowly 
churns.  Their  clean  roots  spread 
over  the  bottom  of  the  tank.  Not 
an  ounce  of  earth  is  in  evidence. 

It  is  Spring  outside,  but  in  the 
greenhouse  of  the  Ohio  State  Agri- 
cultural Experiment  Station  Sum- 
mer has  come. 

Dr.  L.  J.  Alexander,  associate 
plant  pathologist,  discussed  water 
culture,  the  scientifically  valuable 
method  whereby  experts  hope  to 
learn  exactly  what  makes  plants 
grow. 

Water  culture,  he  said,  is  the 
ideal  means  of  "putting  plants  on  a 
diet,"  and  thereby  learning  which 
elements  help  and  which  hinder 
their  development. 

Although  there  is  hope,  there  is 
no  immediate  prospect  of  the  sys- 
tem becoming  a  commercial  suc- 
cess, he  warned,  despite  countless 
inquiries  received  from  persons 
who  would  like  to  start  a  truck 
farm  in  a  tub  of  water. 

Water  culture,  he  explained,  is 
the  growing  of  plants  in  water  to 
which  chemicals  are  added.  He 
hopes  to  make  findings  which  may 
help  convert  barren  fields  into  pro- 
ductive acres. 

The  essential  chemicals  of  the 
process  are  calcium,  potassium, 
phosphorus,  nitrogen,  sulphur, 
manganese,  boron,  zinc,  copper  and 
iron.  Some  others  in  minute  traces 
may  be  valuable.  These  elements 
are  dissolved  in  the  water,  and  the 
plant  "steps  right  along"  as  if 
raised  in  the  earth.  Plants  are 
supported  in  trays  above  the  water 
and  the  roots  reach  into  the  solu- 
tion. 


Good  Ideas 

After  having  my  lettuce,  peas  and  broc- 
coli entirely  devoured  by  a  too  friendly 
deer,  I  made  some  tiny  bags  of  old  mus- 
1  lin    and    cheesecloth    about   two   by    four 
1  inches  in  size.     In  each  I  placed  three  or 
j  four  moth  balls  and  tied  them  up  with  a 
i  twin  string  leaving  six  inches  after  tying. 
1  1  took  these  bags  to  the  garden  and  tied 
s  them  to  bushes,  trees,  the  fence  or  even 
I  to  a  few  tall  hills  of  corn  that  stood  near 
the   smaller    things.      We   often    saw   the 
deer  walking   through   the  meadow  after 
»that  but  they  never  came  near  my  garden. 


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WEED  CONTROL   URGED 

Loss    to     Farmers    by     Plant     Pest 
Ranks   Next  to  Soil    Erosion 

URBAXA,     in.     UP).— Weeds    are 

responsible  for  greater  loss  to  farm- 
ers than  destruction  caused  by  ani- 
mal diseases,  plant  diseases  and  in- 
sects,   rodents    and    predatory    ani- 
mals,   the    annual    meeting    of    the 
American    Society    of    Agricultural 
Engineering  was  told  recently. 
Of  thirty  important  items  of  farm 
;  waste,    the   report   of  the   society's 
weed    control    committee   said,    soil 
;  erosion  ranks  first  and  weeds  sec- 
]  ond.     It  added   weeds  levy   in   one 
or   another   an   annual   tax   of 
about    $3,000,000,000   in    the    United 

The  committee  urged  agricultural 
neers   to   contribute   to   the   de- 
nment   of  equipment  necessary 
the  battle  to  control  weeds,  add- 
that  few  people  realize  the  bur- 
weeds    bring    to    agricultural 
production. 


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Sundial  Construction  Explained 
Directions  for  the  construction  of 
sundials,  tables  for  the  equations 
of  time,  and  mottoes  are  given  in 
Sundials,  a  Bureau  of  Standards 
publication. 


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New   Brand  of  Control 

Tray  Farming'  May  Be  Answer 
to  Problems  in  Rural  Sections 

Researcher  in  New  York  Plant  Institute  Demon- 
strates Practicality  of  Chemical  Tank  Solutions 


LAKE  SHENAROCK,  N.  Y.— In 
a  little  sunny  patch  of  ground 
beside  a  modest  bungalow  up 
here  in  the  country  fifty  miles 
north  of  New  York  city,  Dr. 
Gould  Harrold,  associate  of  the 
Boyce  Thompson  Institute  for 
Plant  Research,   is   growing  to- 


For  tomatoes  —  the  produce 
now  growing  at  Shenarock — 
"tray  agriculture"  is  a  success. 
Dr.  Harrold  has  ten  tanks  in  use. 
They  fit  into  his  small  "side 
yard."  In  two  or  three  of  them, 
they  have  been  making  special 
tests.  The  plants  even  in  these 
look  as  flourishing  as  ordinary 
tomato  plants.    But  in  the  ma- 


matoes  in  trays,  their  roots^  not  I  jority  of  tanks,  where  a  proved 

chemical  formula  and  technique 
are  in  use,  the  results  are  ex- 
traordinary. 

This  is  the  station's  first  sea- 
son. While  its  work  is  still  experi- 
mental, perfect  tomatoe  are  al- 
ready being  grown  in  exceptional 
abundance,  for  a  very  low  price, 
and  without  the  hard  labor, 
equipment,  or  expense  of  ordi- 
nary farming. 

Vines  are  sturdy,  high,  and 
heavy  with  foliage.  They  are 
set  much  closer  together  than  in 
ordinary  garden  culture.  The 
clusters  of  tomatoes  are  bounti- 
ful, giving  definitely  more  than 
the  normal  yield.  The  tomatoes 
themselves  are  vivid  in  color,  firm 
and  meaty  in  texture,  with  plenty 
of  juice  but  no  wateryness.  Their 
flavor  is  rich,  sweet,  refreshing, 
in  fact,  literally  perfect. 

"Tray  agriculture"  is  young 
but  the  prinicples  on  which  it  is 
based  are  old.  Almost  80  years 
ago  an  American  chemist,  Dr. 
Julian  von  Sachs,  listed  the  chem- 
ical elements  a  plant  requires 
to  grow.  Supply  those  elements 
under  proper  conditions,  the 
theory  ran.  and  plants  would 
sprout  and  flourish. 

Recently  various  efforts  to  sup- 
ply the  necessary  nutrition  to 
seeds  or  roots  of  flowers  and  veg- 
etables by  artificial  means  in- 
stead of  through  the  soil  have 


in  the  soil  but  in  tanks  contain- 
ing a  chemical  solution. 

It  is  a  practical  demonstration 
of  one  of  that  small  cluster  of 
modern  inventions  which  the 
National  Resources  Committee, 
in  its  recent  spectacular  report 
to  President  Roosevelt,  predicted 
was  capable  of  radically  chang- 
ing the  entire  complexion  of 
American  civilization. 

Is  "tray  agriculture"  the  an- 
swer to  the  Dust  Bowl?  Is  it  the 
"out"  for  whole  classes  of  Amer- 
icans, capable  of  making  them 
healthy,  independent  if  not 
wealthy,  wise,  and  sun-tanned, 
like  a  sort  of  sublimated  "Town- 
send  Plan"  applied  to  agricul- 
ture, with  the  benefit  of  being 
practical?  Does  it  offer  a  real 
permanent  improvement  in  costs 
and  conditions  of  living?  And 
will  it  take  the  headache  and 
the  backache,  the  heavy  invest- 
ment and  the  poor  return,  the 
long  hours  and  the  insecurity 
out  of  some  kinds  of  farming, 
on  a  national  scale? 
EXPERIMENT  WITH 
TOMATOES  SUCCEEDS 

Here  at  Shenarock,  Dr.  Har- 
rold will  not  answer  those  ques-  i 
tions.  It  is  too  early,  and  the 
experiment  is  too  modest.  But 
he  and  Dr.  John  M.  Arthur,  fa- 
mous biochemist  at  the  Boyce 
Thompson  Institute,  who  is  su- 
pervising the  work,  are  thinking 
In  those  terms. 


been  tried.  One  system  sur- 
rounded roots  with  sand  in  a 
flower  pot  and  furnished  the 
chemical  elements  by  a  drip  ar- 
rangement from  a  tank.  Another 

system  worked  by  inserting  roots 
into  holes  bored  in  wood,  floating 
on  the  chemical  solution.  These 
seemed  fairly  cumbersome  and 
expensive  in  practice.  Then 
science  hit  upon  the  method  now 
being  developed  in  Shenarock, 
with  excellent  prospects  of  prac- 
tical success. 

Since  Dr.  Harrold  is  a  tomato 
expert,  tomatoes  were  chosen 
for  the  test.  For  tomatoes, 
watertight  cypress  tanks  were 
built,  12  feet  long,  a  foot  wide,  a 
foot  deep.  Above  these  were 
placed  movable  trays,  the  same 
dimensions  as  the  tanks  except 
that  they  were  only  four  inches 
high,  with  a  bottom  of  chicken 
wire. 

It  is  the  chicken  wire — an  es- 
sential contribution  made  by  the 
celebrated  Professor  W.  F.  Ger- 
icke  of  the  University  of  Califor- 
nia,pioneer  of  tray  agriculture— 
which  makes  this  type  of  water 
culture  practicable.  A  layer  of 
excelsior  an  inch  deep  covers  the 
chicken  wire,  and  above  that  a 
layer  of  shavings  3  inches  deep. 

Tomato  plants  meanwhile  were 
grown  from  seeds  in  a  seed  tray 
by  ordinary  soil  methods,  either 
in  a  hot  house  or  a  cold  frame. 
When  the  plants  had  almost 
reached  their  blossoming  time, 
they  were  transplanted  to  the 
trays.  Their  roots  were  inserted 
through  the  shavings  and  excel- 
sior into  the  tank,  being  careful 
to  leave  an  air  space  between 
chicken-wire  and  liquid  surface. 
The  plants  were  spaced  a  foot 
apart  in  length  down  the  tra3f 
and  six  inches  apart  in  width. 
That  gave  24  plants  to  each  tray. 
The  average  space  between  toma- 
to vines  in  field  cultivation  is  be- 
tween three  and  four  feet. 

SOLUTIONS  STILL 
UNDER  EXPERIMENT 

The  solution  in  which  the 
plant  roots  were  placed  had  as 
base  62  gallons  of  water  to  a 
tank,  practically  filling  it.  The 
rest  of  the  elements  filled  a  mere 
quart  mason  jar  to  be  poured  in 
each  time.  Others  are  added  in 
minute  doses  with  an  eye-drop- 
per. The  chemical  compounds 
used  were:  Sulphuric  acid,  nitric 


acid,     phosphoric     acid     (the.se 
three  in  the  largest  proportions) 
|  potassium  hydroxide,  ammonium 
hydroxide,    calcium    oxide,    and 
magnesium  oxide. 

Tiny  doses  of  "tonic"  were 
added  to  this  mixture  with  the 
eye-dropper— a  few  drops  of  man- 
ganese, boron,  copper,  zinc  and 
iron. 

A  wonderful  thing  happened 
next  (within  four  or  five  davs 
of  planting  in  the  tanks).  The 
plants'  ground  roots,  eauiooed  to 
suck  nourishment  from  soil  but 
less  adapted  to  liauids.  dwindled 
and  rotted  off.  In  their  place 
appeared  water  roots.  Transfor- 
mation of  the  tomato  from  a 
soil-growing  plant  was  complet- 
ed. 

Now  at  full  growth,  clusters 
of  water  roots  have  spread  rich- 
ly and  grown  far  down  into  the 
tanks.  They  even  appear  in  the 
damp  shavings  and  excelsior. 
The  vines  are  firmly  anchored 
in  the  chicken  wire,  although 
they  require  support  above  as  in 
ordinary  cultivation. 

The  only  change  in  the  fruit 
itself  is  in  its  perfection.  There 
were  practically  no  blights  or 
diseases  to  affect  it  adversely 
And  nature  has  helped  it  along 
through  a  wonderful  quality 
which  Dr.  Harrold  picturesquely 


This  is 
having 


calls  a  "cafeteria  idea.' 
the  faculty  of  plants,  . 
available  all  the  various  elements 
they  want  for  growing,  to  select 
and  use  exactly  what  they  need 
in  exactly  the  right  proportions 


ir* 


*~— *i^  (J  s  W  | 

Gov  u/*^r  itj*^  *jc 


Where  Chemicals  Replace  Earth 


Results  of  the  "tray  agriculture"  tests  at  Lake  Shenarock— Dr. 
Gould  Harrold  displays  roots  of  tomato  plants  (the  tray  has  been 
tipped  up  to  show  how  the  roots  grow  down  into  the  chemical 
tanks),  while  thick  clustering  tomatoes  hang  heavy  on  the  plants. 


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Soil-less  Garden  Successful 


ity   of   producing    potatoi 


Possibility  of  producing  potatoes^ 
at  the  rate  of  nearly  3000  bushels 
to  the  acre  and  clusters  of  tomatoes 
weighing  11  or  12  pounds,  valued  at 
$50,000  per  acre,  and  other  vegetables 
in  like  unbelievable  quantities  is 
foretold  by  a  new  process  of  soil-less 
cultivation  in  tanks  of  water,  chem- 
ically treated. 

Pictures  of  experiments  made  in 
the  past  year  in  his  small  green- 
house in  Berkeley,  Cal.,  shown  by 
Arthur  C.  Pillsbury,  a  former  resi- 
dent of  Medford,  Mass.,  awed  and 
amazed  a  large  audience  attending 
the  lecture  given  recently  in  John 
Hancock  Hall,  under  the  auspices 
of  the  Chestnut  Hill  Garden  Club. 
Mrs.  William  Eller^  Is  president  of 
this  club,  which  was  the  first  to 
present  Mr.  Pillsbury  to  a  Boston 
audience  this  season. 

Mr.  Pillsbury,  a  scientist  who  has 
long  been  noted  for  his  remarkable 
motion  pictures  showing  the  growth 
and  blooming  of  plants,  the  mar- 
velous unfolding  and  closing  again 
of  the  petals  of  a  flower,  the  cir- 
culatory system  of  vegetation  and 
the  polinization  by  Insects,  has  now 
experimented  with  other  phases  of 
horticulture  that  are  revolutionary. 

His  16  by  36-foot  greenhouse  in 
Berkeley  is  fitted  up  with  many 
horizontal  tanks,  which  are  about 
3  by  4  feet  in  size  and  6  inches  deep, 
each  holding  about  25  gallons  of 
water.  They  are  lined  with  asphalt 
paper  and  covered  with  coarse  wire 
netting.    On  top  of  this  he  uses  ex- 


celsior.  straw,  shavings  or  almost 
anything  that  will  give  support  to 
the  plant  and  prevent  the  seeds 
from  falling  into  the  water  of  the 
reservoir  below. 

In  motion  pictures,  he  showed  the 
planting  of  small  sections  of  po- 
tatoes in  this  excelsior,  and  later 
the  plants  growing  to  amazing 
heights.  He  pictured  beans  sprout- 
ing, the  roots  shooting  downward, 
and  the  tops  pushing  up,  and  later, 
gathering  the  beans  in  a  basket. 
His  corn  grew  luxuriantly  to  the 
ceiling,  11  feet  high,  across  the 
greenhouse,  and  down,  and  aver- 
aged three  ears  to  the  stalk.  In  the 
open  air,  he  explained,  the  vege- 
tables would  have  surpassed  their 
record  indoors.  From  one  of  his 
tanks  alone  he  harvested  123  pounds 
of  potatoes. 

Tomato  vines  grew  15  feet  tall, 
and  produced  crops  over  an  ex- 
tended period.  No  hoeing,  no  weed- 
ing and  no  hard  work  were  in- 
volved in  this  very  modern  method 
of  growing  vegetables,  after  the 
greenhouse  with  its  tanks  was  com- 
pleted. The  chemicals  used  in- 
cluded calcium  nitrate,  magnesium 
sulphate,  hydrogen  phosphate,  po- 
tassium nitrate,  sulphuric  acid, 
nitric  acid,  phosphoric  acid,  mag- 
nesium phosphate,  calcium  sul- 
phate, borax,  ammonium  chloride 
and  boric  acid.  Solutions  already 
mixed  are  obtainable  at  reasonable 
cost  from  one  of  the  commercial 
firms. 


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Electrical  Floriculture 


Condensed  from  Scientific  American 
Lawrence  C.  Porter 

Illuminating  Engineer,  General  Electric  Company 


RECENT  RESEARCH  has  shown 
that  the  blooming  times 
l  of  plants  is  controlled 
largely  by  the  total  number  of 
hours  of  light  rather  than  by  the 
intensity  of  the  light.  For  ex- 
ample, plants  which  bloom  in  the 
spring  and  fall  do  so  because  in 
their  natural  environment  they 
receive  about  eight  hours  of  sun- 
light. Those  which  flower  in  the 
middle  of  summer  do  so  because 
they  have  a  total  of  14  to  16  hours 
of  light.  Plants  which  normally 
bloom  in  the  middle  of  summer 
can  be  made  to  bloom  in  the 
spring,  or  even  in  the  winter,  by 
supplementing  the  normal  day- 
light with  five  or  six  hours  of  arti- 
ficial light. 

In  the  past  it  has  been  neces- 
sary to  keep  plants  in  the  home 
close  to  windows  in  order  that 
they  may  have  sufficient  light  to 
grow.  The  success  of  supple- 
mental lighting  in  greenhouses 
led  to  the  development  of  plant 
light  fixtures  for  use  in  the  home. 
These  consist  of  conventional 
types  of  floor  or  table  lamps,  ex- 
cept that  higher  wattage  bulbs 
are  used  and  flower  pots  have 
been  attached  to  the  fixtures.  In 
these  combination  flower  stands 
and  lamps  it  is  necessary  to  burn 


the  lamps  only  during  the  hours 
they  would  ordinarily  be  needed 
for  general  lighting  purposes, 
namely  from  dusk  until  bedtime. 

The  value  of  supplemental 
lighting  is  demonstrated  at  the 
Santa  Clara  Ranch  in  California 
where  botanists  are  developing 
new  varieties  of  plants.  Before 
supplemental  lighting  was  used 
this  process  took  from  three  and  a 
half  to  five  years,  as  the  plants 
had  to  be  grown  from  seed,  cross- 
pollinated,  and  several  crops 
raised.  Since  artificial  light  and 
soil  heating  cables  were  installed 
to  speed  up  the  growth  of  the 
plants,  this  time  has  been  cut 
approximately  in  half. 

In  greenhouses,  flashing  lamps 
that  go  on  for  five  seconds  and 
then  off  for  a  corresponding  pe- 
riod, have  an  effect  on  the  plants 
quite  comparable  to  that  of  con- 
tinuous light,  while  cutting  the 
current  consumption  and  lamp 
renewals  nearly  in  half.  No  matter 
what  type  of  lamps  are  used  they 
shcfuld  be  equipped  with  efficient 
reflectors  to  concentrate  as  much 
of  the  light  as  possible  on  the 
plants. 

Another  interesting  develop- 
ment is  being  carried  on  at  the 
University    of   California    where 


igj6,  Munn  &  Co.,  Inc.,  24  W.  40  St.,  X.  T.  C. 
{Scientific  American,  March,  'j6) 


I  HI    R FADER'S  DIGEST 


plants  are   1  wn   without 

tubers  are  placed 

in  a  layer  of  straw  held  00  wire 
netting  at  the  su  tank  of 

ter  which  contains  chemical 
nutrients,  the  roots  going  down 
into  th;  his  means  a 

much    h  rop   of  | 

has  been  raised  than  has  been 
possible  when  the  potatoes  are 
grown  by  the  usual  method  in  soil. 

Several  of  the  universities  have 
been  studying  the  possibility  of 
growing  plants  in  sand,  furnishing 
the  nourishment  by  means  of 
liquid  nutrients. 

Perhaps  the  most  interesting 
greenhouse  development  was  last 
*s  experiment  at  the  Boycc 
mpson  Institute  for  Plant 
R  .arch.  There  a  greenhouse 
was  constructed  in  which  the 
walls,  floor,  and  halt  of  the  roof 
were  made  of  heat  insulating 
material.  There  was  a  single  row 
of  glass  sash  in  one  side  of  the 
roof.  This  sash  was  set  so  as  to 
admit  the  maximum  amount  of 
sunlight  and  the  interior  was 
painted  white  to  reflect  all  pos- 
sible light  back  on  the  plants, 
only  heat  was  generated 
by  500-watt  lamps,  used  for 
supplemental  lighting  on  the 
plants.  These  Ian  thermo- 

statically controlled.  It  was  found 
tha:  during    the    coldest 


weather  an  even  temperature 
of  68  degrees  F.  could  be  main- 
tained when  the  sun  was  shining. 
On  cloudy  days  the  lamps  burned 
occasionally  and  during  the  night 
they  were  off  and  on  for  periods 
totaling  approximately  six  hours 
per  night. 

This  experiment  may  revolu- 
tionize greenhouse  construction. 
The  results  obtained  were  re- 
markable. Larger  and  better  plants 
were  grown  than  was  possible  in 
the  conventional  type  of  all-glass 
greenhouse.  The  plants  in  the 
heat-insulated  house  came  into 
bloom  in  some  cases  eight  weeks 
ahead  of  the  controls  in  an  ordi- 
nary type  of  greenhouse.  It  may 
be  entirely  practical  to  build 
greenhouses  several  stories  high, 
greenhouses  inexpensive  to  build 
and  to  operate.  Then,  too,  small 
private  greenhouses,  fabricated 
at  the  factory,  may  be  easily 
erected,  at  low  cost,  since  there  is 
no  heating  equipment  to  purchase 
and  maintain.  A  result  of  the  in- 
sulation is  a  higher  humidity, 
with  less  watering  of  the  plants. 
With  thermostatic  control  of  the 
temperature  and  ventilation,  a 
house  of  this  sort  would  be  almost 
entirely  automatic  in  operation, 
and  there  are  already  two  con- 
cerns prepared  to  furnish  such 
greenhouses. 


1  rom  readers  arc  welcomed  for  "Patter"  and  "Toward  a 
'  cturcaque  Speech."  Sucb  contributions  cannot  be  acknowledged  or  returned. 
•  ment  of  I3  is  made,  upon  publication,  to  the  first  contributor  of  each 
accepted  item.  In  all  cases,  the  source  must  be  given. 


*o*      U   *S* 


•<< 


The  Garden  Notebook 

(Keeping  the  Garden  Accessories  in  Condition) 

==========  By  Alfred  Putz  ============ 


WINUK  CARE.  OF  6AR0EN  TOOLS 

25 


HOMt  MAOE 
WIRE  HANGER 
FOR  NOWER 


l/yvpvvvt) 


Good  tools  not  only  la§t  longer  Mian  cheap  ones  but  also/ia'better  work 
and  lessen  the  task  to  be  done.  They  usually  are  worth  the  higher  cost  and 
deserve  special  care  at  all  times.  After  cleaning  up  the  garden  in  the  fall 
most  owners  place  their  tools  in  some  out-of-the-way  place  and  forget  about 
them  until  they  are  needed  again  in<*> ■ 


the  spring.  But  spring  is  not  far  away 
and  now  is  a  good  time  to  look  them 
over  and  put  them  in  working  con- 
dition. 

While  garden  tools  should  be  kept 
clean  at  all  times,  it  is  particularly  im- 
portant to  give  them  a  thorough  clean- 
ing now.    Remove  all  dirtr  which  may 


still  be  adhering,  washing  in  water  if 
necessary  and  scrubbing  briskly  with 
a  stiff  brush.  Metal  parts  must  be 
scoured  with  a  stiff  wire  brush  to  re- 
move rust.  The  actual  working  parts 
should  be  as  bright  and  shining  as  they 
were  when  new. 


Handles  May  Be  Painted 

Sand  paper,  emery  paper,  or  emery 
powder  mixed  with  thin  oil,  will  be 
useful  in  cleaning  the  upper  and  lower 
surfaces  of  such  tools  as  spades,  spad- 
ing forks,  trowels  and  hoes.  When  the 
rust  has  been  removed,  oil  or  grease 
the  bright  surfaces  to  prevent  or  at 
least  retard  further  accumulation  of 
rust.  Wooden  handles  which  are  wear- 
ing out  should  be  replaced.  Those 
that  have  begun  to  splinter  can  be 
smoothed  with  sand  paper.  To  give 
them  a  neat  finish  you  might  paint 
them  a  bright  color.  This  will  make 
it  easy  to  find  them  when  left  lying 
around  the  beds  or  borders  during  the 
coming  season.  Your  neighbors  who 
may  call  on  you  to  borrow  tools  will 
also  find  the  bright  and  distinctive  col- 
ors a  strong  reminder  to  return  them 
to  you  without  delay. 

Shears  of  all  types  should  be 
thoroughly  cleaned,  overhauled  and 
sharpened.  If  you  are  handy  with 
tools  you  may  do  the  work  yourself, 
otherwise  place  them  in  the  hands  of 
a  competent  repair  man.  Before  they 
are  put  in  a  dry-storage  box  give  them 
a  thin  coating  of  rust -resistant   oil. 

The  lawn  mower  should  also  come 
in  for  its  share  of  attention.  A 
thorough  overhauling  is  needed  at 
least  once  a  year.  Sharpening  the 
blades  of  a  mower  so  that  they  are 
true  and  cut  properly  with  the  least 
expenditure  of  energy  is  a  Job  for  an 
expert.  Have  him  take  the  mower 
apart  for  cleaning  and  inspection  of 
all  bearings,  and  ask  him  to  oil  all 
parts  after  cleaning  them.  Pruning 
saws  should  also  be  placed  in  the 
hands  of  a  competent  man  for  setting 

and  sharpening  of  the  teeth  unless 
you  know  how  to  do  this  work  yourself. 

Few  garden  accessories  are  subjected 
to  as  much  abuse  as  the  wheelbarrow. 
Often  it  is  left  outdoors  all  during  the 
year  because  of  its  awkward  size.  That 
is  the  more  reason  why  it  deserves  a 
thorough  overhauling  at  this  time. 
Clean  It  thoroughly,  tighten  all  bolts, 
replace  wornout  boards  or  fasten  down 
those  that  have  become  loose.  Give 
the  wooden  parts  two  coats  of  good 
paint  and  grease  the  axle  bearing  with 
a  heavy  lubricant  that  will  stay  in 
place. 

To  keep  the  wheelbarrow  out  of 
th»  way  you  may  suspend  it  from  the 
rafters   of   the   garage   or   dry   cellar. 


I  The  lawnmower  is  also  easy  to  keep 
out  of  the  way  by  hanging  it  up.  Two 
i  stout  pieces  of  wire  make  a  good 
,  hanger.  At  one  end  of  each  wire  make 
a  large  round  loop  that  will  slip  over 
the  handlebars  of  the  mower.  Small 
loops  at  the  other  ends  are  run  through 
a  steel  ring  that  is  placed  over  a 
strong  nail.  Such  a  hanger  will  be 
found  exceptionally  handy  through- 
out the  year  to  keep  the  mower  out 
of  the  way  when  not  in  use. 

Preserving  Spray  Equipment 

One  of  the  most  disappointing  fac- 
tors which  will  confront  many  garden- 
ers next  summer  concerns  the  various 
types  of  spraying  equipment.  While 
they  were  in  perfect  working  order 
when  last  used,  many  of  them  will  fail 
to  function.  The  ordinary  type  of 
hand-sprayer  will  need  taking  apart 
and  cleaning.  Remove  the  pump  and 
examine  the  leather  washer  on  which 
the  proper  force  of  action  depends.  If 
this  has  softened  or  hardened  exces- 
sively replace  it  with  a  new  one.  If  it 
is  still  firm  and  pliable  give  a  good  ap- 
plication of  oil  to  preserve  its  elasticity. 
After  replacing  the  pump  work  it  a  few 
times  until  the  washer  seals  the  pump. 
Sprayers  which  have  rubber  hose  at- 
tachments must  be  examined  for  the 
condition  of  the  rubber  and  a  tight  fit 
at  the  pump  and  nozzle  ends.  Washers 
which  look  worn  or  are  soft  should  be 
replaced  and  the  nozzle  thoroughly 
cleansed  of  all  foreign  substances. 

The  garden  hose  is  another  much 
mistreated  object.  Of  course,  it  should 
have  been  placed  under  shelter  before  j 
winter  set  in  and  all  water  should' 
have  been  drained  from  it.  A  hose  reel 
is  almost  indispensable  to  protect  the 
hose  from  sharp  bends  which  are 
bound  to  ruin  it  within  a  short  time. 
In  rolling  it  up  prevent  undue  strain 
on  the  rubber  and  fabric  by  stretching 
it.  It  should  be  loosely  rolled  to  keep 
its  round  shape. 

If  you  have  several  lengths  of  garden 
hose,  examine  the  couplings  to  make 
sue  they  hold  the  hose  end  firmly. 
Also  replace  all  old  washers  between 
the  couplings  with  new  ones  of  fresh, 
live  rubber.  Dusters  with  leather  bel- 
lows may  need  a  little  leather  dressing 
to  preserve  their  pliability.  Even  the 
watering  can  should  be  spruced  up  by 
cleaning  it  thoroughly  inside  and  out 
and  giving  it  a  coat  of  paint  on  the 
outside. 

Plant  stakes  that  were  gathered  last 
fall  will  need  sorting  over  for  those 


that  will  serve  another  year.  A  coat 
of  green  paint  will  add  to  their  lasting 
quality  and  make  them  less  conspicu- 
ous in  the  garden.  Seed  boxes  and 
seed  pans  will  also  come  in  now  for  a 
cleaning  up,  as  they  will  soon  be 
needed.  Pruning  knives  always  must 
be  extra  sharp.  You  will  find  that  use 
of  the  extra  fine  grade  (not  the  usual 
fine)  carborundum  stone,  followed  by  a 
honing  on  a  hard  Arkansas  oil  stone  or 
any  good  hone,  will  give  the  knife  a 
razor-sharp  edge  that  makes  pruning 
a  pleasure. 


SUBSTITUTES  FOR  MANURE 

Experience     Reveals     Satisfactory     Soil 
Enrichers   to   Take   Its   Place 


By  E.  L.  D.  SEYMOUR. 

WITH  the  ever  increasing 
difficulty  of  obtaining  that 
old  garden  stand-by— 
"good,  thoroughly  decom- 
posed barnyard  manure"— garden- 
ers are  becoming  more  and  more 
intensely  interested  in  discovering 
what  may  best  be  employed  as  a 
really  satisfactory  substitute  for  it. 
Despite  the  skepticism  of  some 
old-timers  and  horticultural  die- 
hards,  such  substitutes  have  been 
discovered.  For  many  years  the 
agricultural  experiment  stations 
have  been  working  on  them— for  the 

problem  of  finding  manure  substi- 
tutes, since  the  advent  of  the  tractor 
and  the  concentration  of  the  dairy 
industry  in  the  hands  of  specialists, 
has  become  quite  as  acute  for  many 
farmers  as  it  has  for  the  small- 
place  owner. 

As  there  is  usually  much  planting 
to  be  done  in  the  Fall,  many  gar- 
deners begin  in  midsummer  to  pre- 
pare in  advance  their  supplies  of 
substitute  manures  of  some  sort, 
so  that  all  may  be  in  readiness 
when  planting  time  comes. 

What    Does    Manure    Provide? 

But  before  one  can  intelligently 
provide  a  substitute  for  manure  he 
must,  of  course,  have  a  definite 
idea  of  the  function  of  manure 
in  aiding  plant  growth.  Just  what 
is  it  that  gives  manure  its  unques- 
tioned soil-building  qualities? 


The  chemist's  analysis  of  a  short 
ton— 2,000  pounds— of  well  rotted 
barnyard  manure  reveals  that  it  is 
made  up  of  1,500  pounds  of  water 
and  500  pounds  of  dry  matter.  This 
500  pounds  of  dry  matter  contain- 
approximately  10  pounds  of  nitro- 
gen, 5  of  phosphoric  acid,  13  of 
potash.  8  of  lime  and  5  of  sulphur— 
a  total  of  41  pounds  of  chemicals 
—plus  459  pounds  of  organic  mat- 
ter, or  "humus."  In  addition,  it 
contains  a  supply  of  certain  bac- 
teria and  other  microscopic  organ- 
isms which  are  essential  in  effect- 
ing changes  in  the  soil— the  "break- 
ing down"  of  chemical  compounds 
existing  in  the  soil  into  simpler 
and  more  soluble  forms. 

In  other  words,  manure  is  so 
valuable  in  gardening  because  it 
provides,  combined  in  this  one  sub- 
stance, three  distinct  soil  aids: 
first,  email  amounts  of  the  main 
plant  food  elements  (nitrogen, 
phosphoric  acid  and  potash)  and 
also   of   lime    (not   a  food   element 


but  a  "digestion  accelerator"  in 
the  plant's  diet);  second,  a  supply 
of  humus  or  organic  matter  which 
helps  to  change  any  uncongenial 
unresponsive  soil  into  moisture- 
holding,  friable,  productive  loam- 
and,  thirdly,  an  active,  thriving 
population  of  bacteria  beneficial 
to  plant  feeding  and  plant  growth 


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Amazing 
new  book 


i*n 


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tf*s 


^i?i? ;*  **xv 


«$>^ 


By  D.  R.  Matlln,  M.A. 
Chemical  Publishing  Company  of  N.  Y.,  Inc. 
$2  at  leading  book  tellers — See  ad  in  Garden  Section 


They  Ask  Me  .  .  . 

B.  G.,  Aurora,  III,  looks  for  a  book 
on  herbs  called  "Magic  Fragrance,' 
by  Mrs.  Clarkson.  I  keep  on  hand  and 
reasonably  up  to  date  a  list  of  herb 
books— it  will  be  sent  to  any  one  in- 
i  terested— but  this  one  is  not  on  it 
I  and  I  would  be  glad  to  know  about  it. 
;  The  latest  additions  to  this  list,  by 
the  way,  are  two  of  the  most  alluring 
garden  books  you  would  want  to  own: 
"Old-Time  Herbs  for  Northern  Gar- 
dens," by  Minnie  Watson  Kamm 
(Little,  Brown),  illustrated  with 
lovely  little  outline  drawings  and  fine 
photographs  and  giving  history  and 
directions  for  growing  and  use,  and 
"Herbal  Delights,"  by  the  celebrated 
authority,  Mrs.  C.  F.  Leyel  (Hough- 
ton), whose  esurient  sub-title  reads: 
"Tisanes,  syrups,  confections,  elec- 
tuaries, robs,  juleps,  vinegars  and 
conserves" — words  fit  to  rouse  fury  in 
anybody  on  a  strict  diet. 

EASY  to    ~wx 
T EM  YOUR  SOIL 

In  ten  "fnroutes'  time,  this  easy-to-use 
kit  will  give  you  just  the  soil  informa- 
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intelligent  fertilizing  program.  New 
larger  model  makes  20  individual 
tests  for  nitrogen,  phosphorus,  potash 
and  acidity.  Made  by  the  same  lab- 
oratories which  manufacture  most  of 
the  field  resting  equipment  used  by 
government  stations  and  professional 
growers  If  your  dealer  does  not 
carry  it  send  $2  direct  to  Sudbury  Soil 
Testing  Laboratory,  P.  ©.  Box  801, 
South  Sudbury,  Mass. 

AT  YOUR  SEED   DEALER 


Complete  with  instruc- 
tions  and  data   »w 
plant  needs  .  ff%  GfV 


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SOILLESS  PLANT  CULTURE 

SIMPLIFIED 


By    ALEX    LAURIE 


Ohio 


M' 


Professor     of     Floriculture 
State  University 

UCH  bewilderment  has  been 
expressed  recently  about 
the  method  of  growing 
plants  without  soil.  We 
have  been  taught  that  good  "rich" 
soil  was  needed  to  grow  plants  sat- 
isfactorily. This  "richness"  implied 
the  use  of  manure  or  other  fer- 
tilizers to  supply  the  needs  of  the 
plant.  Considerable  stress  was  and 
is  still  placed  upon  the  necessity  of 
organic  matter  or  humus  in  the 
soil.  All  this  is  true.  Then  how 
can    we    attempt    to    grow    plants 

without  soil? 
I 
The  answer  involves  no  trickery. 

We  can  go  back  to  the  work  of 
Woodward  in  1699.  He  grew  pep- 
permint in  different  water  solu- 
tions. Since  then  a  great  deal  of 
work  has  been  done  in  the  labo- 
ratory, where  plants  were  grown 
and  flowered  and  fruited  in  water 
or  sand  to  which  the  necessary  el- 
ements for  plant  growth  were 
added.  Actually,  there  is  little  dif- 
ference |>etween  these  old  methods 
and  the-\-hewest  ones.  In  soil,  the 
humus  and  the  various  bacteria  or- 
ganisms and  others  make  the 
various  elements  available  to  plants 
so  that  they  may  be  absorbed  by 
the  roots.  In  water,  sand  or  gravel, 
we  use  materials  which  are  read- 
ily available  so  that  the  roots  may 
absorb    them. 

Anchoring  the  Plants 

One  of  the  first  difficulties  to  be 
overcome  lay  in  the  method  of  "an- 
choring" the  plants  when  they  were 
grown  without  soil.  Since  water  by 
itself  could  not  be  used  for  the  pur- 
pose, a  scheme  was  devised  in  which 
a  waterproof  box  was  filled  with 
water  and  the  necessary  elements  of 
nutrition  added. 

Because  "of  complicated  difficul- 
ties we  have  come  to  the  conclusion 
that  in  spite  of  the  publicity  given, 
a  better^method  is  to  substitute 
some  c<|arse  material,  such  as 
gravel  or  cinders,  for  the  water. 
That  enables  us  to  keep  the  plants 
firmly  rooted,  solves  the  problem 
of  support,  gives  us  sufficient  air 
and  makes  the  process  more  feasi- 
ble  and   practical. 

Actually,  how  would  one  go  about 


doing  all  this  on  a  small  scale  in 
the  home,  the  greenhouse  or  the 
garden?  First,  it  is  necessary  to 
start  the  seedlings.  A  shallow  box,  a 
"flat,"  such  as  is  used  by  florists, 
is  filled  with  sand,  and  over  this  is 
poured  a  solution  made  by  dissolv- 
ing one  ounce  of  nitrophoska  (15-30- 
15  fertilizer)  in  two  gallons  of 
water.  The  sand  is  thoroughly 
drenched  with  this  solution,  and  the 
seed  is  then  sown  in  the  same  man- 
ner as  in  soil.  In  a  short  time— as 
soon  as  the  second  set  of  leaves  has 
been  developed  by  the  young  plant— 
the  seedlings  will  be  ready  to  trans- 
plant to  more  permanent  quarters. 

Permanent  Quarters 

These  permanent  quarters  may  be 
a  box  of  any  size,  about  six  inches 
deep,  which  is  made  waterproof  by 
coating  with  asphalt  paint  ,not  tar). 
One  end  of  the  box  has  an  opening 
and  a  half-inch  pipe  or  tube  is  in- 
serted into  an  inverted  trough 
placed  along  the  bottom,  as  shown 
in  the  diagram.  Connected  to  this 
pipe  by  means  of  rubber  tubing  is 
a  bucket  large  enough  to  hold  a 
quantity  of  nutrient  solution  which 
will  fill  the  box  to  within  one 
of  the  top.  The  box  itself  may  be 
filled  with  gravel  or  cinders,  with 
individual  particles  of  about  one- 
fourth  to  one-half  inch  in  si 

THie  actual  operation  of  fading 
consists  of  raising  the  bucket  to  a 
height  above  the  level  of  the  box,  so 
that  the  solution  will  run  into  it  by 
gravity.  As  soon  as  the  box  is  filled 
the  bucket  is  lowered  and  the  solu- ; 
tion  drains  back  into  it.  The  solu- 


tion is  used  over  and  over  again. 
!  Tb^Hksiest  way  to  figure  the  size 
of  the  bucket  is  to  measureWthe 
cubic  contents  of  the  box  and  then 
take  one-third  of  ■■  figure  as  the 
amount  of  solution  needed. 

Our  tests  have  indicated  that  this 
solution  should  be  used  about  four 
or  five  times  per  day. 


HERBS  AS  PEST  REPELLENTS 

■     -     ■ 

v»3pPPr  r*. 

Some  Species  Grown  in  Gardens  Are  Found 
To  Discourage  Troublesome  Insects 


By  FRANCES  H.   CURRAN 

Time  has  in  no  way  diminished 
the  infinite  uses  of  herbs  but  has 
brought  to  light  more  applications 
and  modern  uses  for  these  prac- 
tical and  historical  plant^.  As  long 
as  maij  can  remember  herbs  have 
provided  in  manifold  ways  food, 
medicine  and  esthetic  enjoyment. 
Recently  another  utilization  has 
been  discovered  that  should  prove 
particularly  interesting  not  only  to 
professional  horticulturists  but  to 
every  amateur  back-yard  gardener. 

John  Dukinfield  and  Carol  Bar- 
rett, recognized  authorities  in  this 
field,  have  found  after  several 
years  of  observation  and  research 
that  a  wise  use  of  herbs  will  act 
as  a  deterrent  to  many*  of  the  de- 
structive insects  that  work  havoc 
in  gardens.  Even  the  Japanese 
beetle,  against  which  gardeners 
and  scieritols  are  constantly  fight- 
ing, seem^to  keep  clear  of  their 
herb  garden,  which  is  situated  in 
an  area  of  Long  Island  infested 
with  this  pest.  The  owners  at- 
tribute this  mainly  to  the  excessive 
vitality  that  characterizes  herb  life. 
Herbs  Not  Overbred 

"Destructive  insects  feed  mostly 
on  weak  plants  or  those  that  have 
started  in  on  a  slow  process  of  de- 
cay," Mr.  Dukinfiejd  observed. 
"Many  of  the  plants  to  be  found 
in  modern  gardens  are  so  overly 
nurtured  and  highly  bred  through  | 
incrossing  that  their  natural  vital- 
ity and  powers  of  resistance  are 
greatly  weakened,  leaving  them 
easy  prey  to  various  kinds  of  in- 
sects, beetles,  aphids  and  other 
parasites.  Our  forebears  did  not 
complain  of  such  widespread  insect 
invasion  in  their  garde*fc  though 
similar  insects  no  doubt  existed 
during  that  period.  It  seems  rea- 
sonable to  assume  that  these  insects 
have  found  sufficient  numbers  of 
devitalized  plants  among  the  newer 
sorts— created  by  a  desire  for  new 
:  colors  and  bigger  flowers— to  en- 
able them  to  increase  rapidly. 


"This  is  a  theory  that  can  open  a 
great  deal  of  discussion,  but  the 
fact  remains  that  many  kjflB  of 
garden  pests  are  now  with^j^Hmd* 
something  must  be  done  about  it 
if  we  wish  to  have  healthy  and  bet- 
ter gardens  as  the  seasons  roll  by. 

Herbs  have  been  proving  the  ef- 
ficacy of  their  virtues  and  values 
for  countless  ages,  so  perhaps  we 
have  made  our  researches  fer  anti- 
dotes too  far  into  scientific  fields 
instead  of  realizing  that  nature  prqN 
vides  antidotes  for  all  her  poisons 
and  ills,  and  it  would  therefore 
seem  wiser  to  search  for  cause  and 
effect  along  the  paths  of  nature."- 
Herb  Planting  Advocated 

Mr.  Dukinfield  advises  clients 
who  complain  of  a  great  number  of 
destructive  insects  in  their  garden* 
to  plant  borders  of  herbs  around 
beds.  Thyme,  santolina  and  the. 
pungent  .southernwood  are  often, 
effective  m  lessening  infestation* 
Some  gardeners  believe  that  the 
castor-bean  plant  is  helpful  in  keep- 
ing moles  out  of  the  garden.  Mr. 
Dukinfield  and  Miss"  Barrett  have 
also  blended  a  mixture  of  dried 
herbs  that  is  very  effective  as  a 
moth  repellent.  Pyrethrum,  a  me- 
dicinal herb  of  long  standing,  has 
been  used  as  a  base  in  the  manu- 
facture of  some  of  the  best  known 
commercial  insecticides  for  many 
years  and  is  widely  recognl^d  as  of 
value  in  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  the" 
United  States. 

Other  herbs  with  insect-repelling 
qualities  are  blessed  thistle,  hyffi 
sops,  both  pink  and  white,  sweet 
marjoram,  lavender  and  Winter1 
savory— all  vital,  pungent  and 
healthy  in  growth. 

"Also  try  the  simple  experiment 
of  placing  sprigs  of  fresh  mint, 
preferably  spearmint  or  julep  mint, 
near  ant  .runs  and  watch  the  ants 
turn  away  from  it,"  Mr.  Dukinfield 
suggests.  "These  facts  point  the 
way  to  herbs  that  have  for  ages 
past  been  used  as  insect  repellents, 
so  that  a  further  and  modified  use 


seems  logical  and  practical  in  re- 
tarding the  annual  invasion  Hou* 
gardens." 

Mr.  Dukinfield  finds  that  some, 
varieties  of  herbs  are  naturally 
more  effective  than  others  in  dis- 
couraging pests,  and  he  is  contin* 
ually  experimenting  to  confirm  his 
opinions.  He  and  his  partner  are 
designing  a  special  herb  garden  for; 
the  "Gardens  «b  Parade"  at  the 
World's  Fair  in  1939,  and  hope  by 
that  time  to  have  further  announce- 
ments concerning  modern  uses  of 
herbs. 


Goal  01  juoq  unemists 

What  is  expected  of  German  sci- 
ence is  clear  enough.  Some  way 
must'  be  found  to  stretch-  the  ef- 
cy  of  vegetable  albumen',  with- 
out depriving  industry  of  necJjsary 
raw  materials.  So  we  fin<f^  the 
chemists  busily  at  work.  (jflffman 
science  sees  salvation  in  yeast.  In 
the  dry  state  it  contains  from  50  to 
55  per  cent  aLbumen  and  8  per  cent 
ash.  Grow  yeast— its  cells  multiply 
rapidly— and  albumen  is  produced. 
What  is  more,  yeast  can  form  albu- 
men out  of  non-albumen.  Pasteur 
and  Duclaux  showed  that  long 
i  ago.  In  Germany  yeast  was  culti- 
i  vated  on  a  huge  scale  with  the  aid 
of  watered  molasses  to  which 
nitrogenous  salts>had  been  added. 

In  other  words,  yeast  obligingly 
made  albumen  (protein  or  edible 
nitrogen)  out  of  minerals  that  con 
tained  nitrogen.  The  process  died, 
industrially  speaking,  because  it 
could  not  compete  in  time  of  peace 
with  cottonseed  cakes  for  cattle  or, 
soy  bean  in  various  forms. 

Germany  is  returning  to  this 
abandoned  yeast  process  and  trying 
to  increase  its  economic  efficacy. 
Today  wood  is  converted  inttftMgar, 
which  is,  in  turn,  dissolved  OT  water 
'as  a  substitute  for  molasses)  and 
d  to  yeast.  Economic  success  has 
'     v,oon  attained. 


j ,  Mi^41^ 


Cape  Codder  Makes  Big 
In  WaterfGrown  Tdmato 


T^ 


Woodward  Employs 
Chemical  Solution  at 
Hyannis  Greenhouse 

By  Bernard  Peterson 

A  $2400  tomato  crop  at  a  $400 
production  cost,  without  hard 
work  or  backache,  is  Cape  Cod's 
entering  wedge  into  the  new  era 
of  soilless  agriculture. 

W.  L.  Woodward,  a  resourceful 
chemical  engine^;  has  already 
harvested  an  experimental  crop 
and  is  speeding  his  second  crop 
toward  maturity  without  the  use 
of  soil  in  his  greenhouse  at  Bass 
River,  Hyannis,  and  he  declared 
today  that  waterculture  will  be 
generally  adopted  within  ten 
years. 

"You  have  demonstrated  with 
magnificent  plants  that  toma- 
toes can  be  grown  in  water. 
Are  you  willing  to  say  that  your 
undertaking  is  economically 
sound  and  profitable  ?"  I  asked 
Mr.  Woodward. 

He  replied,  "You  can  grow  al- 
most any  other  crop  by  this 
method,  and  my  conviction  is 
that  any:'  grower  who  doesn't 
adopt  it  is  going  to  get  lost  in 
the  shuffle  in  ten  years.  I 
wouldn't  think  of  doing  it  any 
other  way. 

"You  inquire  about  the  eco- 
nomics. The  original  cost  of  the 
greenhouse  and  equipment  was 
$4000;  I  now  have  a  durable 
building;  growing  in  there  today 
are  8000  perfect,  flawless  plants. 
I  expect  to  pick  6000  pounds  of 
ripe  tomatoes  in  January,  Feb- 
ruary and  March  and  sell  them., 
at  40  cents  a  pound,  wholesale. 
That  will  yield  $2400,  ajjd  the 
total  cost  of  production  will 
have  been  $400.  Then,  I  will 
pick  up  about  $400  more  in  the 
summer,- so  that  my  net  will  be 
$2400."  **     . 

This  is  the  first  commercial 
enterprise  of  its  kind  reported  in 
Massachusetts.  A  number  of 
persons  are  known  to  be  testing 
the  prfhcipl^of  waterculture 
here.  One  eflPbfcnent  was  car- 
ried out  at  the^altham  Field 
Station. 


The  Woodward  greenhouse 
looks  like  any  other  greenhouse; 
bjBpstead  of  soil  long  water- 
filled  vats  line  the  building. 
Resting  on  them  are  shallow 
boxes  with  chicken-wire  bottoms 
spread  over  the  wire  is  a  layer 
of  excelsior.  Small  tomato  plants 
grown  elsewhere,  in  soil,  are  in- 
serted through  tl$e  excelsior  and 
wire  so  that  the  roots  touch  the 
water.  Then  the  excelsior  is 
pushed  close  up  to  the  stem  to 
support  it.  Later  the  plant  is 
tied  with  strings  from  the  ceil- 
ing. 

Growth  is  stimulated  by  cer- 
tain chemicals  added  to  the 
water.  Mr.  Woodward  went  to 
the  University  of  California  to 
learn  about  this  process  ar 
get  the  formula  for  the  gro^R- 
solution;  but  he  has  departed 
considerably  from  the  California 
technique. 

"Do  you  employ  different 
chemical  solutions  for  different 
kinds  of  vegetables?" 

"No.  You  can  use  the  same 
formula  for  all  plants.  And  in 
ten  minutes  I  can  show  anyone 
what  to  use." 

"How  expensive  are  the  chemi- 
cals?" 

"They  cost  me  $35  a  year  for 
8000  plants." 


Vines  are  unusually  sturdy, 
high  and  heavy  and  can  be  kept 
alive  and  productive  over  a  long 
period,  but  Mr.  Woodward  said 
that  he^will  permit  his  plants  to 
rise  only  to  nine  feet,  because  of 
the  difficulties  in  picking  at 
higher  levels.  The  growth  can 
be  shortened  three  weeks  with 
waterculture.  Among  the  chem- 
icals useful  in  such  solutions  are 
sulphuric  acid,  nitric  acid,  phos- 
phoric atfW,  potassium,  hydrox- 
ide, ammonium  hydroxide,  calci- 
um oxide  and  magnesium  oxide. 

Even   hormones    are    used   by 
Mr.  Woodward  as  a  little  extra 
tonic,  because  it  promotes  root' 
growth. 


"Reinforcing"  the  Compost 

For  example,  6  pounds  of  ammo- 
nia sulphate,  3  of  superphojohate, 
2V%  of  muriate  of  potash  anV  5  of 
pulverized  limestone  could  be  com- 
bined and  sprinkled  on  at  the  rate 
of  a  pound  or  a  pint  for  every  4 
cubic  feet  of  sand  and  compost. 
Thus  a  pit  2  by  4  feet  would  require 
2  pounds,  or  a  quart.  These  quanti- 
ties would  be  enough  for  more  than 
a  single  pile.  Any  additional 
amounts  of  these  fertilizers^  or  of 
a  mixture  of  them,  may  be^jpsed  in 
the  garden  or  stored  for  another 
year;  or  they  may  be  shared  with 
neighboring    gardeners.     Seedsmen 


JTTJNGS! 

.    Chiiper 


NOW  GROW  REAL 
ROOTS  ON  CU 

Faster   •  Surer 

with  AUXILIN 

77ie  M/rac/e  Root  Grower 


Even  difficult  cuttings  from  plants,  shrubs, 
trees  root  easily,  quickly  when  Auxilin 
treated.  (See  photograph  of  American 
Holly  rooted  in  6  weeks.)  You  get  more  ; 
roots— and  largerS^No  special  skill  or 
equipment  needed.1  Complete  with  grad- 
uated phial  and  full  directions.  Sold  at 
seed  and  department  stores  everywhere. 
*n  .pun  r/\n  rncr  descriptive  booklet,  or  | 
OR— SEND  FOR  FREE  50e  for  I  6  or  bottle; 
III  trsat  up  to  600  euttlngi !  Sent  postpaid.  Write 
f.  T-l.  Pennsylvania  Chemical  Corp.. 
New  Jersey.  ^± 


will  treat 
•         Oep 


ft  All  -Year-  Around 
r  Sox 


BIO-DYNAMIC  FARMING  &  GARDENING 
g     -SOIL  FERTILITY,  RENEWAL "^    f 
AND  PRESERVATION 

By  Ehr  en  fried  Pfeiffer.      Price  10s.  6d. 

Everyone  interested  in  gardening  or  agriculture  should  know  of  the 
Bio-Dynamic  Method  of  soil  fertilisation  and  crop  production. 

It  was  originated  by  Rudolf  Steiner,  and  striking  evidence  of  its  value 
may  be  seen  on  the  Continent  and  in  the  U.S.A.  In  Germany,  for 
instance,  though  every  other  activity  connected  with  the  name  of  Rudolf 
Steiner  is  prohibited,  the  German  Government  makes  an  exception  for 
hi^system  of  agriculture,  and  give  important  financial  advantages  be- 
of  the  special  nutritive  value  of  its  produce. 


y 


The  book,  or  further  information,  is  obtainable  from 


THE   PUBLISHERS, 

THE  RUDOLF  STEINER  BOOK  CENTRE  8C  PUBLISHING  CO., 

54    BLOOMSBURY    STREET.,    LONDON,    W.C.I 


%3C  C—JU-A 


z,  *.  o 


Ai- 


^ 


Tr*' 


VEGETABLES  D 
BY  A  NEWfRi 


Use  of  Sulphur  Dioxide  Holds 

Promise  of  Easing  Nation's 

Surplus  Crop  Problem 


OLD  HANDICAPS  OVERCOME 

Flavors  Preserved  by  Method 

That  Gives  Starch  Industry 

a  Year-Round  Activity 

Aided  by  the  Chemical  Founda- 
tion and  the  Department  of  Agri- 
culture, Dr.  E.  F.  Hopkins,  assist- 
ant professor  in  the  New  York 
State  College  of  Agriculture,  has 
developed  at  Laurel,  Miss.,  a  process 
which  will  make  it  possible  to  dry 
fleshy  vegetables  more  effectively 
than  ever  before  and  to  store  them 
indefinitely.  A$  one  immediate  re- 
sult of  his  work,  factories  that  ex- 
tract starch  from  sweet  potatoes 
can  now  operate  the  year  round. 

Drying  as  a  method  of  preserv- 
ing is  old.  It  cannot  be  economi- 
cally carried  out  just. by  spreading 
fruit  or  vegetables  in  the  open  air. 
Huge  areas  are  required.  Bad 
weather  ruins  the  spreadings. 

Indoor  drying  with  artificial  heat 
brings  about  undesirable  chemical 
changes.  In  sweet  potatoes,  for  in- 
stance, starch  is  reduced  to  a  sort 
of  paste  which  is  useless  in  starch 
making.  In  some  vegetables  a 
tough/  horny  coating  is  formed 
which;  is  waterproof  and  which 
slows  -ft  the  drying  process.  Some- 
times tne  flavor  is  changed  by  heat. 
Above  all,  there  is  the  cost  of  fuel. 
Advantages  in  Use  of  Vapors 

Heat  has  the  great  advantage  of 
increasing  the  permeability  of  the 
plant  tissues,  so  that  the  water  can 
escape.  The  problem,  then,  was  to 
discover  a  way  of  obtaining  the 
same  effect  with  no  heat  or  little 
heat.  Vapors  and  gases, >uch  as 
Sther,  chloroform,  carbon  tetra- 
chloride, chlorine  and  benzol,  have 
•the  desired  properties.  And  they 
do  not  affect  the  plant  chemically. 
Best  of  all  these  agents  is  sulphur 
dioxide. 


Seal  vegetables  in  a  jar  with"1" 
chemical  vapors  by  .way  of  experi- 
ment and  tne  juice  leaks  out  of  the 
cells.  A  vegetable  thus  treated  re- 
semble a  snowball  that  has  been 
soakedin  water.  Relieved  of  the  in- 
ternal pressure  of  the  juice,  the  now 
permeable  cells  simply  collapse. 
Beans,  beets  and  potatoes  become 
flabby  and  limp. 

Gassed,  pressed  green  beans  look 
like  blades  of  coarse  grass;  beets 
like  thin  disks.  They  dry  in  air  in 
about  thirty-six  hours,  even  two 
hours  if  the  air  is  heated  to  only 
120  degrees  Fahrenheit. 

Beets  and  string  beans  can  be  re- 
duced to  15  and  18  per  cent  of  their 
weight  respectively  after  they  are 
pressed,  and  sweet  potatoes  to 
about  50  per  cent.  The  juice  is  al- 
ways clear,  which  indicates  that 
the  plant  tissue  acts  as  a  filter. 

This  juice  always  has  been  a  prob- 
lem to  the  manufacturer  of  potato 
starch.  If  it  is  not  removed  by 
drying  it  has  a  harmful  influence 
on  the  manufacturing  process.  And 
when  evaporated  it  is  lost.  Now 
it  is  not  only  possible  to  remove  it 
but  to  collect  it  and  turn  it  into  a 

I  valuable  by-product.  It  consists 
largely  of  sugar.  And  sugar  can 
readily  be  converted  into  alcohol. 

In  actual  practice  Dr.  Hopkins 
finds  it  best  to  grind  up  the  veg- 
etables and  then  to  turn  on  sulphur 
dioxide.  Whereupon  the  pulp  is 
put  into  a  centrifugal  separator 
and  the  juice  whirled  off  like  cream 
from  milk.  The  remaining  cake 
contains  less  than  40  per  cent  mois- 
ture and  crumbles  easily.  A  little 
more  drying  at  low  ^temperature 
and  it  can  be  stored  indefinitely  as 
it. is,  or  ground  to  a  meal. 

The.  sulphijr  dioxide  passes  off  in 
the.  final  drying.  So"  long  as  it  is 
present  there  is  no  danger  of  rot- 
ting through  fermentation.  Nor  is 
there  any  after  drying.  Thoroughly 
dried  vegetables  do  not  ferment. 

Boon  to  Starch  Industry 

It  is  easy  enough  to  imagine  the 
consequences  of  Dr.  Hopkins'!  | 
work.  Sweet  potatoes  must  now  be 
harvested  and  converted  into  starch 
in  ninety  days.  When  the  season 
is  over  the  factories  have  nothing 
to  do.  Theirt  efficiency  is  low  and 
the  losses  are  large. 

Usually  the  potatoes  are  piled  up 
in  outdoor  bins  before  the  factory 
can  grind  them  up.  In  that  interval 
some  of  the  starch  is  changed  to 
sugar.  There  is  also  some  rotting 
of  potatoes  in  bad  weather.  With 
this  new  process  there  is  no  reason 
why  a  factory  should  not  operate 
the  yeajr  round,  drawing  orr  dried, 
stored,. -potato  pulp  or  meal  as  it  is 
wanted. 

Farmers  gassing  their  vegetables, 
whirling  them  in  centrifugal  ma- 
chines,   drying-  the   pulp   in  a  shed 


low  fire  and  hauling  the  pulp 
>me   centred  jTactory-the   pros- 

Ibly   holdAgjfte  dried   potato   or 

Posslolv%r^ ^V^age  <arm 
possibly    the    proceH   may    pUy    a 

partfc  solving  th#  surplus  crofcind 
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mto  values.  ' 


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